


Vile Vortices

by Aobh



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Evil Corporations, Indiana Jones Style Adventure, Modern Character in Middle Earth, Modern Girl in Middle Earth, Multi, Mystery, Romance, Sciency jargon I don't fully understand, Second Age, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Third Age, space and time travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2020-01-04 09:39:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18341054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aobh/pseuds/Aobh
Summary: Leda Gauling travelled to another world in exactly the way you might expect: through a portal at the bottom of a lake, on an island that didn't exist.Or, alternate summary: Girl Falls Into Middle Earth again and again (and again).Slow Burn. AU. Time and Space Travel.





	1. Chapter 1

**April 4th, 2019, St. Philomena Hospital, Bermondsey**

"Doctor Ackerman?"

Leda, who was eleven hours into a thirteen-hour shift and had previously been mechanically shoving rich tea biscuits into her already dry mouth, looked up at a snowy haired man who was standing next to her table in the hospital cafeteria.

Leda eyed him warily and reached out for her neglected cup of water. He was wearing a beige, oversized blazer and white linen trousers that were crinkled by the knees. It wasn't exactly the height of fashion, that was for sure. The man's white hair created a halo around his lined face and only partly managed to shade the crazy out of his intense blue eyes.

_Oh boy_ , Leda thought, downing the lukewarm water in her cup as he watched her expectantly, _here we go_.

"Who's asking?" she, (un)ironically, asked.

She looked around, noting some F1s clustered on a table a little way away. They hadn't noticed the man enter, it seemed. Or if they did, they didn't think it was weird that an old man approached a lone junior surgeon instead of talking to her on the Ward like a normal person.

Maybe he was a patient's dad. Or something. But that didn't explain why he was here. Now. At her table. Stopping her from eating stale biscuits and feeling sorry for herself.

Leda knew that she could probably be a little nicer. Especially to someone who looked old enough to be her grandfather. But somewhere between being thrown up on (twice!) by a guy who could aim his vomit accurately enough to get it under her top each time and finding out the cafeteria had run out of her favourite pasta when she finally went on her lunch break three hours late, she had forgotten how to be nice to anyone. All she wanted was a (third) shower, a David Attenborough documentary, and one of those crappy ready-meals she told her patients not to eat.

Instead of answering, the old man gestured to the plastic chair on the other side of the table.

"May I sit?" he asked, already dipping into the seat before Leda could protest. She sighed, leaning back on her creaky plastic chair to fold her arms across her chest. The action dislodged a coil of hair from the large bun atop her head and it settled across her forehead. The old man, however, was sitting with a lot more dignity. His tanned hands were clasped on the sky-blue table and he was smiling amiably at her like he hadn't just interrupted her pitiful dinner. For a moment, neither of them spoke and Leda began to grow uncomfortable underneath his un-blinking stare.

"Uh- are you a family member?" she asked at the same time he said: "You are Leda Ackerman, are you not?"

Leda's brown eyes narrowed, and she uncrossed her arms to lean forward over the table. There was something in the way he said her name. Like he was interested in Leda the person and not Leda the doctor. It raised her suspicion levels to amber.

"Again," she ground out, eyes darting between the old man and the cafeteria exit behind him. If she left now, she could be back on the ward in under a minute. She may even be able to nap before her break was over. "Who's asking?"

The old man smiled again, this time his mouth opened, and Leda watched each of his perfect white teeth come into view as his smile widened.

"I am." he said simply.

"And you _are_?" Leda asked rudely, leaning away again. Her mouth was beginning to get dry and she wished she hadn't drunk all her water at once. She also wished she had taken her packed lunch with her the evening before. Instead she had forgotten it on her kitchen counter where she was almost certain her flatmate had devoured it as soon as she left.

"My name is Dr Samuel Morgan." he stated, his white teeth disappearing behind his lips as his smile slipped into something more contemplative. His hand reached into his front pocket and produced a white business card that he slid across the table towards her. Leda ignored it, not taking her eyes off the man who she was beginning to think was less crazy and more just wildly confused.

When she didn't pick up the business card he sighed, the first sign of well- anything, other than his heavy stare and calm smile.

"Are you a family member of a patient? If not, I'm not sure I have anything to say to you."

The man shook his head, gesturing towards the business card Leda purposefully ignored.

"I am not a family member of a patient, no. I am a Professor of Geo-biology at The University of Edinburgh." he said, as if that would somehow jog Leda's memory. "I live and study in the city and-"

"- _And_ you like long walks on the beach and sipping Pina Colada's while getting caught in the rain?" Leda cut in, rolling her eyes.

She leaned forward again and pinched the corners of the business card between her fingers, holding it at an angle to read it without having to move any more than she had.

DR. SAMUEL MORGAN  
PROFESSOR OF GEO-BIOLOGY  
tel: +44 784 7761 773  
email: semorgan@live.ac.uk  
fax: 0203 664 3995

Fax? _Jesus_ , Leda thought. Now she _knew_ he was crazy. He still used fax? Who still used _fax?_

"You forgot to add that I like horror movies, pineapple on pizza and a side of sarcasm every time I meet a new person." Dr. Samuel – or the man claiming to be him, anyway – said, laughter in his eyes.

Leda snorted and dropped the card back onto the table. She opened her mouth to respond but he cut her off.

"And," he said as he steepled his fingers under his chin and pierced her with another one of his weighted stares. "I knew your father."

Leda was very careful not to move any part of her face, despite the lurch her heart gave in her chest.

"Oh." she said, as airily as she could manage. "No- he- he died when I was small. I don't-"

"No, Leda." Dr Morgan leaned forward across the table. He wasn't smiling, but there was something smug about him. Something that screamed gotcha. And maybe something more urgent, as well. Desperation. "No, he didn't. You and I both know that your father-"

"I'm sorry, Dr Morgan. You've come all this way but I'm positive that you have the wrong person." Leda's words came out in a mangled rush, tripping and falling into one another with no space between them until it was all one long run-on sentence. "I'm sorry to have wasted your time. I hope you find the person you're looking for."

"I think I already have, Ms Gauling." Dr Morgan said.

He lay his hands flat against the table, spreading his fingers. A show of peace, perhaps, but the action didn't make Leda any less on edge. In fact, it made her want to run even more than she already did. She looked past him, to the cafeteria's open doors. If only she could just get there. Because- well- shit. How did he know?

"You _are_ Leda Ackerman. Formally Leda Gauling, correct? Daughter of Richard Gauling, Professor of Physics at Oxford University who specialised in the subject of Condensed Matter? Richard Gauling, who advanced the theory of Vile Vortices to include-"

Leda's heart gave another lurch in her chest and she smiled. She forced it to look at least mildly polite and not like she was baring her teeth and stood up quickly. Perhaps the action was a bit too forceful, though, as her chair tipped backwards from her speed, clattering to the ground with a screech.

A few of the F1s looked up in concern and she shot them strained smiles, shrugging her shoulders in apology but she didn't stoop to pick up the chair. She didn't have time. She had to leave. **Now**.

"I'm sorry- but I'm not Leda Gauling and there isn't a doctor in this hospital with that name. If you excuse me, I have patients I need to attend to."

Leda didn't give him a chance to respond before she began speed-walking to the exit. There was a clatter behind her and the heart that had lurched I her chest seemed to leap up and into her throat. The walls of the cafeteria swam as she broke into a run. It felt like the world she had painstakingly built was beginning to wobble around the edges. If she could just make it out of the empty cafeteria and back to her ward, he wouldn't be able to follow her. She would be safe. Maybe.

"Leda- Wait- _Wait!_ "

She could feel the Professor gaining on her and her breath came one-two-two one-two-three-two until she wasn't sure if she was breathing in or out or what the order was or where she was or who-

"Leda please-" Dr Morgan's fingers grazed her upper arm and Leda stumbled, tripping over her own feet until she righted herself. Up ahead were the doors to her ward and she broke into a sprint, thighs protesting the sudden pressure. Thank God the hallway was empty. How would she even explain this to her boss? A doctor running away from what other staff would assume to be a potential patient? She'd be ruined.

"It isn't what you think!" Dr Morgan called behind her. She daren't look back, though. She couldn't face him if she did. She feared what she would say or do and more than that, she was terrified of what he would say. How had he found her? How could he have possibly found her?

"I only wish to talk to you! Please!"

Leda skidded to a halt by the ward doors and slammed her key card onto the back reader. She yanked the door open a fraction and slipped through the gap. The Professor got to the door a second after it clicked shut and she flinched when he slammed a hand on the glass and rattled the handle.

"Leda please!" he called through the glass, but she was already off, shoving off from the door and speeding past the nurse's station with a tight smile by way of explanation.

She didn't look back, nor did she relax the hunch in her shoulders until she was huddled in the sleep room, head in her hands, body rolled into a tight ball on a lower bunk. One thought running through her mind as the memory of the Professor's desperate, pleading face.

Shit. Shit. Shitting _shit_.


	2. Chapter Two

The rest of Leda’s shift passed in agonising slow-motion.  It was a rare, quiet night on the Queen Victoria Intensive Care Unit and due to the time, most of their patients were asleep. The only other sounds, other than the low talking and laughing from the nurses and the comforting repetitive beep the ward’s many heart monitors, was the occasional low moaning that came from Bay Three. He had been in varying levels of pain since the day before when Leda had assisted in his hip surgery. Complications had arisen and if it wasn’t for the morphine button that he could press whenever he wanted, Leda figured he’d be a lot louder than quiet moaning. Usually Leda would kill for a night like that one but the extended quiet just made her feel like Dr Morgan was going to come around the corner at any moment and out her to her colleagues.

“Dr Ackerman?” Susannah Birchwood, an F1 in the last quarter of her year in Emergency Medicine, appeared a Leda’s elbow. Leda jumped slightly at the sudden appearance but was grateful for the distraction of thinking about all the ways Dr Morgan could fuck her life up.

“I have the patient files you requested.” Requested? God, Susannah was so formal with her sometimes. Leda sighed and accepted the file with no comment. She flicked through it quickly, skimming over the annotations Susannah had made in her smooth, looping writing.

“Good work, newbie.” Leda said, smiling wanly as she handed the file back. “And how many times have I told you to call me Leda?”

Susannah shrugged and smiled again by way of apology. Leda took a new file from a small pile in front of her and handed it to Susannah while she rubbed her eyes.

“Bed Two has an acute case of Penicillin Hypersensitivity.” Leda said. “I gave her two hundred milligrams of Doxycycline at eleven last night so she should be due another dose in the next half hour. Can you check on her patch of cellulitis? Make sure to wake her up first, mind you. If she gets startled, she tends to swing first and asks questions later.”

Leda touched her cheek, feeling the tender skin underneath from where Mrs Hitchon had accidentally hit her the hour before. Susannah, undeterred by the threat of violence, nodded eagerly and snatched the file from Leda’s.

“Noted, Dr Ackerman. I will endeavour to assist to- I- I mean endeavour to complete the task- ah-” Susannah scrambled to reclaim the sentence she abandoned. A warm blush settled over her cheeks and, feeling bad for her, Leda offered another small smile although this time she tried to put a little more warmth into it.

“I’ll uh- get right on it, Dr. Acker- er- I mean- Leda.” Susannah finished lamely.

Instead of looking embarrassed, however, the perky F1 just took a deep breath, smiled widely and marched down the dim ward to her next task. Her blonde ponytail bobbed behind her, held in place by a loose pink bow she’d tied into her tresses.  Leda admired her eagerness and the way she shrugged off her embarrassment at using the word endeavour in the twenty first century and almost pulled it off. Leda couldn’t remember a time she had ever been able to shrug something off so easily. Her entire life had been shadowed by her father’s legacy. And now, the one time she thought she was rid of it forever it was back to plague her in the form of Dr Morgan. Leda worried her lip and wiped a hand over her mouth. She hadn’t listened to Dr Morgan for long enough to hear what he had to say, and she knew he’d be back. They always came back when it was to do with her dad.

“You ok, Leda?” Annette Fanning, the head of ICU, asked as she dropped into the empty desk chair and interrupted Leda’s worrying. She was carrying a pile of messy patient folders that she promptly unloaded onto the desk, knocking Leda’s pile of equally messy dune coloured folders askew.

“Yeah. Fine.” Leda murmured with a tight smile. Annette shot her a concerned look as she logged onto the dated computer, but all Leda could think was the same question she had been thinking for the past hour and a half and that was: how did he _find_  her?

She had been so careful. She had changed her _name_ for Christ’s sake! She shouldn’t have been found. And especially not by some weird Professor of Geobiology, whatever the hell _that_ was.

“Are you sure? You don’t look too well.” Annette said.

She clicked her dull fingernails against the keyboard and the computer flashed to a pic of her and her husband George on their honeymoon in Zimbabwe.

“Yeah, I’m just…” Leda trailed off, sighing heavily and staring at the clock’s hands seemingly not move. What she wanted to say was that she was just wondering how long it would take her to quit her job, get out of her flat contract and flee to Gibraltar all while leaving no trace of her ever being there.

Annette tapped away at her keyboard while Leda suffered through a potential breakdown.

“Just- just not feeling too great.” Leda eventually settled on when the silence had stretched too long.

Annette stopped clicking at her keyboard and frowned, her eyes doing a quick sweep of Leda’s slumped shoulders and general look of pale dejection.

“The morning shift will be here soon.” Annette said and turned her swivel chair to face Leda, forgetting her computer for the moment. “And I can manage with the nurses. If you want to go a bit early that’s fine by me and if you don’t feel any better don’t-”

“-Don’t come in because of the risk of infection to the patients. I know. _Thank you_ , Annette. You’re a lifesaver.” Leda said quickly. She stood and made her way to the other side of the station.

“You ok to do a handover for the earlies?” Leda asked but she was so eager to get out that she almost missed Annette’s soft _yeah_ drifting after her retreating back.

When she finally left, it took Leda all of five seconds to decide that spending money she didn’t have, on a cab she didn’t really want, was ultimately better than her usual lonely half-hour walk home.

The sky was just beginning to the bleed into light blue as the cab pulled up beside her flat. Her eyes swept the empty street for any signs of Dr Morgan before she threw a quick _Bye!_ to the cab driver and scrambled out of the car.

Scuttling up her stairs Leda couldn’t help but feel like she was being watched and it was with shaking hands that she unlocked her front door and slammed it shut behind her.

Leda closed her eyes and sucked in a long, heavy breath. Her feet were burning, and she knew she should take off her shoes or she’d have to surgically remove them herself due to all the swelling, but she couldn’t bring herself to move just yet. She _also_ knew that she would have to do something about Dr Morgan but just for one second, Leda wanted to lean against her front door in peace and try to forget about the fact that her life was most likely already ruined.

“Tough shift?”

Leda screamed and jumped. Her eyes flew open in shock and she dropped her handbag at her overnight bag at her feet. She blinked rapidly, to focus her gaze on a shadowy figure standing in her hallway. For a second, she saw the Professor and then worse, her father. But then both images bled away to show her less scary, mousy-haired flatmate Molly.

Molly blinked owlishly back at her. She was carrying Leda’s blue bowl in her hand. Knowing Molly, it was probably just a bowl of full-fat milk.

“Jesus, Molly!” Leda breathed, hand coming to her chest to feel her racing heart beneath her ribs. “You scared the shit out of me!”

Molly blinked again. She nodded and then tilted her head to the side in contemplation.

“Yes. Yes…” She mused, trailing off. “I _suppose_ I did scare you. I didn’t mean to. I thought you saw me when you walked in. I’ve been standing here for a while. Why are you home so early?”

Leda groaned, feeling exhaustion creep into the corner of her eyes as the shock of Molly’s appearance wore off. She shrugged, left her bag where it has dropped and shuffled past Molly into their small kitchen.

“I took a caa-A- _aab_.” Leda said around another yawn, her wide mouth distorting her words. As she passed the counter on the way to the fridge, she saw her empty lunchbox, a few crumps left over from the ham, chicken and chorizo sandwich she had made for lunch the day before. Molly was edging around the room like the strange girl she was and ignored Leda trying to catch her eye.

“I’m not mad, Molly. Just, the next time you eat my lunch, can you please put the box in the dishwasher?” Leda said, reaching into the fridge and pulling out a pasta based ready-meal.

At work she had to preach to her patients that a home cooked-low fat meal was healthier than anything else but at home? Leda was free to eat as badly as she wanted. And after the night she’d had? She deserved as many ready-meals as she could stomach.

“Yes, Leda.” Molly said. When Leda turned around, ready meal in hand, Molly had set aside her bowl of -Leda peaked in and saw that it was, in-fact, a bowl of plain milk- and was currently doing squats in the middle of their cramped kitchen, right in front of the microwave.

Leda waited for a moment before clearing her throat. “Uh- Molly?” she gestured towards the off-white microwave nestled into the corner of their worn kitchen counter.

Molly rose out of one of her squats, shooting up like a reed. She blinked three times and then smiled toothily at Leda.

“Sorry, Leda.” she said like she said everything else when Leda told her off. Like she was sorry she made Leda upset, but she wasn’t entirely sure why she was in trouble.

Leda sighed and stuck the ready meal into the dated microwave, turning the deal to three and a half minutes. When she turned back to Molly the girl had a handful of cornflakes that she was one by one while intermittently taking sips from her bowl of milk.

Oh boy Leda thought, finally kicking off her shoes. She ignored the thuds as they dropped; for once she didn’t care where they landed.

“Why are you up so early, Molly?” Leda asked absently while she thought about the new David Attenborough documentary she wanted to watch before bed. But first she had to figure out who the hell Dr Morgan was and what he wanted from her; or worse, what he wanted from her _Dad_.

“Mercury is in retrograde.” she said, slurping at her milk while maintaining eye contact.

“Oh.” Leda said, frowning like she hadn’t thought about it. “Right. Of course. My bad.”

Mercury was in _what_?

The microwave’s sudden beeping saved Leda from asking Molly about whatever Mercury was up to and what that had to do with her being awake before her usual two pm. She pulled the meal out by the edge of plastic that didn’t feel like it was on fire and loaded it and a bottle of water onto a tray.

“I’m off tomorrow.” Leda said as she balanced her tray and side-stepped around Molly who had stopped drinking from the bowl of plain milk and was now instead chewing on some long green thing that protruded from the corner of her mouth.

Leda stopped by the front door to pick up her bag and quickly made her way to the room. Molly followed quietly and watched Leda push open her bedroom door.

“Ok, Leda.” she said in her small voice. She was still carrying her bowl of milk and Leda saw a peak of orange cereal in her closed hand.

“I’m going to sleep until I feel like I can stand and then I’ll sleep some more.” Leda said, twisting to put her tray on her bed.

Molly’s eyes darted around her figure into her dark room and she nodded, lifting the bowl to slurp more milk.

“Then do you wanna watch a movie?” Leda didn’t know why she asked that. She was almost certain that she wouldn’t have time to watch anything with Molly, but she was just so small and weird, slurping at her milk and poking her tongue into her tight fist to get a piece of dry cereal.

Molly smiled toothily. “Yes, Leda!” she nodded.

“Ok then.” Leda nodded, smiling a little despite a sudden wave of exhaustion making her rub her eyes. “Night Molly. Have a good day, yeah?”

Molly nodded again and kept nodding until Leda awkwardly let her bedroom door close. Molly leaned her head to the side until it shut, unwillingly to let Leda out of her sight. Molly was weird, for sure. But she was also sweet and always paid rent on time and even though she ate Leda’s lunches she always made up for it by- well, Leda wasn’t really sure what she did to make up for it, but she could never be angry at Molly for very long. Molly hardly left the small flat but her bill money was always in Leda’s account days before it had to be. Leda wasn’t sure what the younger girl did for a living and Leda was always to scared of Molly prying back to enquire too deeply about what her weird flatmate did for cash. Leda just assumed she had rich parents, which was fine by her; rich parents always paid the bills on time.

Her blackout curtains were still shut from the day before and Leda sighed as she switched on her bedside lamp, the energy saving bulb slowly lighting her sparsely furnished room. At the bottom of the window was a homemade draft excluder; a pair of old tights stuffed with old holey socks. Beneath the window stood a plain white desk. The thin plastic bowed slightly in the middle from the weight of a second-hand desktop computer and a cracked mirror that had been her mother’s. To the right of the room was a white chest of draws from _Ikea_ that had been on sale and a clothes rack she had found in a charity shop. The only thing slightly personal in the room was a picture on her nightstand. She had been six and gap-toothed and was smiling with all her face, sandwiched between her mother who was sporting a new hair-cut that Leda could remember her hating and her father, who had clearer eyes than he had the last time she had seen him. She could remember how hot the day had been and how sticky her hands were as she set the camera’s five second timer. But that was a lifetime ago now. Her Mum was long-gone and her Dad- well, he was pretty much all gone now, too.

It wasn’t much. Just a pokey room in a pokey flat in a shit borough of London. But it was all she had, and it was _hers_. And that meant that Leda treasured every inch of it. She rubbed at her dry eyes again and sunk into her desk-chair. She booted up her slow computer and put thoughts of her tragic backstory out of her mind.  No use in dwelling, the past is past and all that shit.

David Attenborough was calling to her, as was the ready meal growing rapidly cooler on her bed but as soon as she logged onto her PC, she pulled up a web browser instead of loading _Netflix_ and typed in the name that she knew wouldn’t let her relax and hit enter.

DR SAMUEL MORGAN, began the first result, PROFESSOR OF GEOBILOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, RELEASES FINDINGS ON EXCAVATED CAVE IN NORTHERN TIMBUKTU AT THE ALGERIAN MEGALITH SITE. HE AND HIS TEAM OF THIRTEEN ARCHAEOLOGISTS, WITH FUNDING FROM THE AETHER RESEARCH GROUP-

Leda shook her head and clicked the back button, she didn’t care about his geological expeditions. She wanted to know who he was. She went back to main search page, clicking on the fifth result after skimming a promising summary.

It was a university page and the first thing she saw when the page finally loaded was the smiling face of the man at the hospital. He was dressed normally in the photo, jeans and a horrible plaid shirt that probably cost more than Leda made in a day.  

DR SAMUEL MORGAN IS EUROPE’S LEADING SCIENTIST IN THE NEWLY FORMING FIELD OF GEOBIOLOGY. HE JOINED THE SCIENCE FACULTY IN 2016 AS COURSE DIRECTOR AND HAS HELPED ELEVATE OUR GEOBILOGY DEPARTMENT TO FIELD-LEADING STATUS. HE WAS PREVIOUSLY AN ARCHAEOLOGY PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD. DR SAMUEL MORGAN IS ORIGINALLY FROM PEMBROKE-SHIRE AND IS DESCENDED FROM A LINE OF WORLD-CHANGING RESEARCHERS. HIS GRANDFATHER, LORD LOWRING MORGAN-

Leda stopped reading, and leaned back in her chair until it squeaked at the extreme angle, she had forced it into. The picture of the smiling Dr Morgan stared back at her and she sighed again. The expelled air tickled her chest.

So. He was who he said he was. Which was both comforting and frustrating. Either he was telling the truth, or he was extremely wealthy and had somehow bought or hacked into the internet to plant this information to trick her or anyone else who may look him up. But if he _was_ telling the truth, then he was most likely one of her dad’s followers and that just dug up a magnitude of other problems.

Leda’s phone buzzed in her pocket and she blinked lazily, pulling it out of her back pocket. A text turned the notifications light cyan and she frowned, inputting her pin to see who it was.

MOLLY ROWAN popped up on her screen and Leda’s frown deepened, wondering if the girl was in trouble. She clicked the message and let out a startled laugh.

_Sweet dreams, Leda! <:)_

Leda grinned at her phone, feeling delirious with stress and exhaustion from her shift. She wasn’t sure what the emoji Molly had sent was supposed to mean. Was it a smiley face with a party hat? A horn? It didn’t really matter but it made Leda chuckle softly.

_Thanks Molls x_

She texted back, slipping the phone back into her pocket and glancing at the still smiling face of Dr Morgan. On a whim, she dug her phone back out, scrolling down her pitifully short contacts list. It consisted of a few people from work, Molly, and the Domino’s a couple streets down. And then lastly, all by itself in its own section, a number she hadn’t even looked at in months, let alone called.

THE EYRIE

Even its name was foreboding. She shivered involuntarily but her thumb slid her thumb across the screen, and she pulled the phone to her ear before she could even register what she was doing. She spied the time on her computer 9:25. Surely, they would be open.

Her stomach churned. Maybe she shouldn’t bother. He probably didn’t want to speak to her anymore than she wanted to speak to him. It probably wasn’t even worth it. He wasn’t well, and he hadn’t been getting any better. She should hang up. She should definitely just hang u-

“-lo? Hello? Is someone there?” A pleasant voice was speaking softly into the phone and dragged her out of her internal panicking.

“Uh-hi- sorry. I- This is The Eyrie, isn’t it?” Leda stammered. All her exhaustion fled, and she felt more awake than she had since leaving the hospital. Her heart was beating rapidly in her chest and the hand in her lap began to twitch.

“Yes. This is the Eyrie.” The voice paused and added delicately: “Are you alright? Do you need assistance?”

“I-no-” Leda barely managed to keep a growl of frustration inside. “I mean- yes. I need help. I need to speak to a patient. I can’t make visiting hours so I was wondering if I could just…call.”

The person on the other line was silent for a moment before her cheery, sweet voice was back. “That’s fine. Visiting hours have just started and, granted the patient has phone privileges, I can transfer you.”

“Uh- great. Great.” Leda muttered, tilting her head to hold her phone between her ear and shoulder to free her left hand.

“What is the patient name?” the woman from the Eyrie asked.

“Richard.” Leda said and then added quickly. “Sorry- Richard Gauling.”

She hadn’t said his name out loud in over a year and hearing it in her small room made her already churning stomach cramp. She wrapped her hands around one another to comfort herself.

“And your name?” asked the voice.

“Leda. Leda A- Gauling. Leda Gauling. I’m his daughter.”

“Alright, Ms Gauling. I’m going to call the ward. If they’ll allow you to speak to your father, I’ll transfer you. Hold the line.”

“Oh- thanks. I appreci-”

Elevator music interrupted Leda’s thank you and she sighed again, feeling itchy in her chair so she stood, beginning to pace back and forth in her tiny room which wasn’t exactly easy given its size. She waited a good while and considered hanging up but then a voice stopped her pacing and shaking and threw her back in time to when things were worse but better. If that made any sense at all.

“Leda? Is that you?” Her father sounded old. Ol _der_ of course, but also just…old. Tired.

Leda felt a wave of sadness wash over her and the hot tears prick her dry eyes. Her heart seemed to stop and then start again rapidly and skip a beat in between. Leda’s mouth felt dry so she ran her tongue around it but it hardly helped.

“Hey, dad.” She said, voice small. She hated how small she sounded. She wasn’t the one in the wrong, here. “How are you?”

Her Dad didn’t reply for so long that Leda opened her mouth to ask if he was still there but his words beat her to it.

“Did you know that Mercury is in retrograde?” he said.

Leda blinked and stared at her plain white walls in confusion. Here we go again, she thought, feeling the tiredness that had left earlier all come back at once.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is way longer than I wanted it to be and I’ve edited it so much I can’t bear to look at it again for a while. This is going to be a slow burn. I’ve got to set up half the plot before Leda can get anywhere near Middle Earth.
> 
> Thank you for all the kudos and hits! I’m very thankful that anyone is actually reading the drivel I write aha Hope you enjoy this chapter and please do let me know if there are any mistakes. I don’t have a beta and I often miss these things. Thank you again for clicking on my story and for reading. Please leave a review if you liked it (or didn’t!). Have a lovely rest of the week!  
> Novaer,  
> Aobh x


	3. Chapter 3

 “Uh- yeah, Dad. I know.” Leda said, unsure of why she was talking about Mercury being in retrograde. _Again_. “Molly told me.”

“Yes, yes. Molly. Of course.” He muttered, as though he knew who Molly was, even though Leda knew he didn’t remember a single thing she had told him the last time she had seen him. She knew this because the last time they had seen one another had ended in disaster and tears. _Her_ tears. Not his. Because he ‘ _wasn’t ill, you see_ ’. No-no. Not ill. But he knew. He just _knew_ that the Vile Vortices were real and if she would just _listen_.

Yeah. He knew everything about the goddamn Vile Vortices _,_ but he didn’t know when his own daughter was sobbing in front of him or that he was supposed to tie his hospital gown at the back otherwise his arse hung out for everyone to see. Some genius he was.

“And did you know that Mercury in retrograde means that the Bermuda Triangle Vortice is open? Now, if you could only help me leave this place, I could charter a pla-”

“Yeah. No. About that, Dad.” Leda interrupted, too tired to listen to her dad rant about the Vile Vortices for the millionth time in her life. She dropped onto the edge of her bed, mattress dipping under her weight. Her forgotten ready meal wobbled beside her from the disruption. “Do you know a man called Dr Samuel Morgan?”

Her dad continued like he hadn’t heard her.

“-to the drop site. Perhaps we may even have to go by boat, but the portal is open, Leda. I know it is. I can feel it. And I know you can feel it too. It’s in your blood. It’s in your-”

“Dad!” Leda struggled to keep her voice level. Why was he always like this?

“ _Blood_ \- what- yes, Leda? Yes?” He asked.

Leda knew he was sick, but it was sometimes easy to forget when he sounded like that. Like her dad who just forgot to stop talking and not a man who went insane and tried to steal a plane to fly to Bermuda after being arrested on suspicion of murder.

She breathed deeply out of her mouth, mentally counting back from five before she spoke again.

“I _said_ , do you know a Dr Samuel Morgan? He’s a professor of Geobiology at The University of Edinburgh.”

“Well.” Her dad said slowly. He _hmm’d_ and she could imagine him tapping his chin the way he did whenever he was deep in thought. Her mum had always called it his dork face. That was before everything went to crap, though. Now Leda just felt irrationally annoyed the longer he went without talking.

“Well?” Leda prompted, trying to sound calm and not like she desperately wanted to be anywhere else.

“Yes. I know a man by that name, but he didn’t teach at Edinburgh. He was a professor at Oxford with me when you were small and your mother was- was-”

Leda glanced at her desktop screen that had dimmed slightly from inactivity, reading the words of the university page

… PREVIOUSLY AN ARCHAEOLOGY PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD…

“Before your mother-” her dad kept trying to get the words out as she stared at the picture of Dr Samuel Morgan.

“It’s ok, dad.” She said quietly, turning her stare to her hands. “It’s ok.”

Leda heard her dad swallow on the other end of the line. She needed to change the subject fast. There was no way she wanted to get into a conversation with her dad about her mum. There weren’t enough stars in the sky or hours in the day for them to hash out everything they needed to talk about, and Dr Samuel Morgan’s reappearance was too important to let go. Leda only had enough brain capacity for one calamitous problem at a time.

“So, how did you know this Samuel Morgan from Oxford, then?” Leda asked after the silence had stretched.

“Well.” Her dad paused again and Leda’s hand twitched at his unconscious stalling. “I knew him for years when we taught at Oxford together. He was in an adjacent faculty, you see. Humanities. You know he was always quite a jolly fellow; went grey quite young. He was very interested in the work I was conducting about the Vile Vortices. He often helped with research when he could.”

Leda chewed on her bottom lip as she listened and glanced at her forgotten ready meal. She picked up her fork, sliding it under the plastic topper to swirl around the pasta and sauce beneath. A thin plume of smoke escaped through the gap. At least it was still sort of hot.

“He always had interests in the field of Geobiology but it was young then.” Her dad continued. “It was barely even a teachable subject back then, but he was very interested in it and its connections to the Vile Vortices.”

Leda _hmm’d_ , still swirling her fork in her ready meal.

“Why did you want to know, Petal?” He asked.

Leda dropped the fork into the meal, grimacing as the silver was swallowed by the rich tomato sauce. Her dad hadn’t called her _Petal_ in years. Maybe _The Eyrie_ was doing it’s job.

“Is it about the Vile Vortices? And Mercury in retrograde?”

Or maybe _The Eyrie_ hadn’t helped at all.

“No, dad.” Leda muttered. She lay back on her bed and stared at the white, ingrain wallpapered celling. “It isn’t about that. I just heard his name and wondered.”

“Oh.” Her dad sounded disappointed and Leda felt a twist of guilt in her gut. “Is that the only reason you rang?”

“Yeah.” Leda said. She could have lied, she knew. Made up something about wanting to hear his voice to make him feel better but all the talk about Vile Vortices and the fact that it felt like her body was about to shut down from exhaustion was just too much. Her patience and sympathy were almost depleted. “That’s the only reason.”

“Right. Of course. Well it was nice to hear your voice, Leda.” He sounded even more sad.

“ _Dad_.” Leda couldn’t help the whine of longing in her voice. He almost sounded normal. _Almost_. And then he spoke again, and the moment was lost.

“Now, about my release from this place.” He said and Leda groaned. “I’ve been using my allotted computer time to research flights from London to Bermuda. If you would just-”

“Dad, I have to go.”

“There is a flight that leaves tomorrow at seven am. Signing me out will only take an hour or two and-”

“Dad! I have to _go_.” She interrupted with a shout.

Her dad stopped talking and grew silent.

“Look.” Leda said, feeling as though her guilt and sadness was going to close her throat. “I-I’ll call you later this week. I promise. We can talk about- we can _maybe_ talk about you coming out for a few days a week. But you _have_ to stop with this retrograde nonsense and the Vile Vortices, or they won’t- they won’t let me take you. You have to let it go, Dad.”

Her dad didn’t respond.

So she added in a whisper: “You have to let _her_ go. You have to let Mum go.”

The only sound in her room was the whir of her crappy computer and her uneven breathing. Leda cleared her throat when her dad kept quiet.

“Dad. Look. I love you. But I have to g-”

The dial tone sounded, and she sighed, letting the phone drop onto the bed beside her.

Well _shit_. Now what was she going to do?

A yawn clicked her jaw wide and she turned on her side, blinking blearily up at the Dr Morgan’s smiling face, still dimly illuminated on her PC screen. Sleep overtook her not long after. Mercifully, whatever cruel God had thus far made sure to ruin her life, took a rare pitying stance and granted her a deep, dreamless sleep.

 

*****

 

“A letter came for you while you were out.”

Days had passed and Leda hadn’t heard a thing from Dr Morgan. She had taken cabs to and from work, not trusting the open road or public transport where he may find her. But he hadn’t shown up. For all she knew, he had already gone back to wherever it was he went when he wasn’t trying to undo all the work she had done to start a new life.

Her conversation with her dad had played on her mind since he hung up on her and she had often found herself staring at the Eyrie’s contact information on her phone only to sigh and close it again.

No point crying over spilled milk.

Or dads who were clinically insane.

It was Leda’s first day off since Dr Morgan found her at the hospital and she was sprawled on the couch after having gotten back from the corner shop. She was so tired she hadn’t even bothered to unpack any of the food she had got and the white plastic bags were piled haphazardly in front of her on the floor.

Molly was stood at the back of the couch, leaning a hand down to dangle a white envelop in Leda’s face.

“A letter?” Leda asked, confused. She plucked the envelope from Molly’s thin fingers with a mumbled thanks. Her first name was written in a looping script across the front. There was no stamp or address. Hand delivered, then. Leda’s hackles raised and she bent a corner of the letter as her grip tightened.

“Did you see who put it through the letter box?” Leda asked cautiously and sat up.

Molly’s feet rustled Leda’s abandoned grocery bags as she circled the couch to sit beside her in the empty spot. She was eating an ice-lolly, biting down with her front teeth in such a way that, had Leda not been distracted by the anonymous letter she was almost ninety percent sure was from a persistent Professor of Geobiology, she might have winced at.

Molly shook her head and took another bite of her lolly.

“Nope.” She said, popping the _p_.

Leda grimaced, turning the letter over in her hands.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” Molly asked, without looking. She reached between their bodies to pick up the television remote and turned the channel to the news. Her feet curled up beneath her, Leda thought she looked a little bit like a cat.

Leda shrugged. She didn’t want to. But she knew that eventually she would open it. She didn’t really have the luxury of ignoring it.  

Dr Samuel Morgan _was_ real. He knew who she was, and he knew her father. I she ignored him and he blabbed, everything she had achieved would be ridiculed.

But… if she opened the letter and listened to whatever he wanted maybe they could come to an agreement and he wouldn’t be tempted to ruin her.

With a sigh, Leda ripped into the edge of the envelope and wiggled her finger inside, pulling up until the whole thing was torn. Inside was a single folded piece of white paper.

_St. Mount Plaza Hotel,_  
Dome Restaurant  
19:00

_Please, Leda_

He hadn’t left his name, but Leda didn’t need to see it to know who it was from. Molly didn’t look at her as she switched the news to some cartoon.

“Who’s it from?” she asked, licking at her lolly.

“I dunno.” Leda lied, scrunching up the paper and standing up. “They must have gotten the wrong Leda.”

Molly frowned, finally looking away from the TV to stare up at her.

Before she could question the flimsy fib, Leda spoke instead, smiling down at the small, pale girl.

“I’m going to go put my groceries away and then I’ll have a nap before my shift. Have you eaten?”

Molly blinked and her frown only slightly shifted as she held up her lolly. “Yes. I’ve had three.”

Leda nodded. “Right. That’s great, Molls. But I meant actual food.”

“I had a Mars bar earlier.”

Leda nodded again, always patient. “I’ll leave you some food on the counter, yeah?”

Molly smiled and turned back to the television, switching to the History channel and what appeared to be a show about aliens. Molly loved those conspiracy shows. At least _something_ was normal.

 

*****

 

Leda hated lying to Molly. But this, as with all the other times, was absolutely necessary. She was standing outside of the St. Mount Plaza Hotel. It wasn’t raining but the air was wet and heavy, and Leda felt uncomfortable in front of the fancy Mayfair hotel.

She pulled her cardigan around her shoulders more firmly and fingered the shoulder bag draped across her torso. Her phone was inside and when she walked it clanked against the illegal bottle of pepper spray she had bought months ago. Just in case, she had said. Well. ‘Just in case’ had come very quickly.

Leda glanced at her watch before walking up the steps of the hotel. 18:45.

A man opened the glass door for her. The lobby was all minimalism and grey undertones with gold accents along the skirting boards. It wasn’t what Leda would pick but Leda also didn’t know anyone with enough money to spend the night there, so her mild horror at the colour scheme was of little consequence.

Leda smiled at the guy and he couldn’t quite keep the subtle confusion from his face when he enquired:

“Can I… help you, Miss?”

Leda spied his name badge. Leonard. She giggled internally, despite the nervous energy that filled her. Of _course_ his name was Leonard.

“Uh- I’m meeting someone here.” She said, wishing she hadn’t thrown the letter out and taken it with her to use as proof.

Leonard’s eyes narrowed. “… _Meeting_ someone?” he asked, his suspicion growing as he and he took another look at her outfit.

Leda nodded, tugging at her ratty cardigan and wishing she had at least worn a smarter overcoat. And perhaps chosen a better combination of words. “Yes. Well. No- not the way you think I’m meeting someone. I-”

“Leda!”

Leonard’s head whipped so quickly to the right that Leda was worried he might have accidentally given himself whip-lash.

She followed Leonard’s eyeline and saw Dr Morgan standing to the right of the main desk by an open elevator door. He must have just come down.

“Leonard.” Dr Morgan said, smiling widely, looking between the two of them. “This is my guest.”

Leonard straightened, a touch of pink rising on his already ruddy cheeks. Dr Morgan’s white hair was fuzzy around his head and tinged yellow under the foyer’s lightbulbs where it thinned at the ends.

“Of course, Dr Morgan. My apologies. The Dome have already set up your seats.”

“Shall we?” asked Dr Morgan, nodding to Leonard in thanks. Leda sighed and began to walk away, taking some pride in making Dr Morgan jog after her as she entered the up-scale restaurant.

The first thing she saw was a shimmering crystal chandelier dangling over all the plush red seats and booths and crisp white table cloths. The crystals refracted the white, hanging lights and all around mini-rainbows danced over cutlery and plates. It was dazzling, and startling and Leda might have even said beautiful if she wasn’t so nervous. There were a few other guests in the restaurant, all spaced apart. The room was so big and high-ceilinged that she had to strain to hear any of their conversations even when she spied their mouths moving. The whole space had a air of quiet to it, despite the very loud décor.

There was a long bar that stretched the width of the room at the back of the restaurant and Leda’s throat clenched. She wanted a drink very badly. Something strong. Like whiskey. A double. Or maybe triple if they did it.

Dr Morgan passed her, being led by a woman in a sleek white dress to a booth by the bar. Leda sat heavily on the side closest to the door and eyed The Professor as he spoke to the waitress and ordered a bottle of white wine Leda already knew she couldn’t afford.

“Thank you for joining me.” Dr Morgan said as he slid into the booth across from her and unfolded a starched white napkin onto his lap. He was wearing another linen shirt, this time in a pale blue colour and the same beige, oversized jacket he was wearing the last time she had seen him.

“If you try anything, I’ll pepper spray you.” Leda said, leaving her own napkin untouched. She wasn’t staying for long. Just long enough to get him off her back and then she was gone.

The server returned, interrupting anything Dr Morgan was going to say as she poured wine into his glass. She turned to pour into Leda’s but she held up a slim, dark hand that shone under the chandelier’s light.

“No thank you.”

“Leave the bottle, Mona, if you will.” Dr Morgan said.

He hadn’t taken his eyes off Leda and she placed her bag on her lap, patting the pepper spray she knew to be inside. Mona smiled sweetly at the Professor and did as he asked. She shot Leda a pleasant, albeit mildly confused, smile as she walked back to her station at the entrance.

Dr Morgan took a sip of his wine before delicately putting the glass back down on the table.

“I spoke to my dad.” Leda said, unwilling to dally in small talk and ignore the reason why she was there in the first place. “He said he knew you from Oxford.”

Dr Morgan nodded. “I’m glad we are no longer ignoring our truths, Leda.”

Leda rolled her eyes. “Just tell me what you want, Morgan.”

Dr Morgan placed his hands on the table in front of him and said with the straightest face and the calmest voice: “I want you to come to the Bermuda Triangle with me.”

Leda was so startled that she burst into laughter. She ignored the stares of the other hotel and restaurant guests as her laughter grew raucous.  

Dr Morgan kept calm while she laughed. He only raised an eyebrow when her laughter turned to giggles that fizzled out slowly.

Leda swiped a finger under her eye, gathering some of the water that had gathered.

“ _That’s_ what you lead with? ‘I want you to come to the Bermuda Triangle’?” Leda tittered again, leaning back against the plush back of the booth. “God. I’m gonna need a drink for this.”

“Well, you told me to tell you what I wanted.” Dr Morgan said, unfazed by her laughter at him.

Leda snorted. “Yeah. I thought you meant like you wanted to speak to my Dad or read some of his old research or whatever. Those things I could do if it meant you’d forget you ever met me. But the Bermuda Triangle? Jesus. I’m not going into that hell hole with you. No matter how far Mercury retrogrades itself.”

“So you _have_ read his research!” Dr Morgan leaned forward, blue eyes growing bright. His nostrils were flared, and his mouth parted slightly to allow his tongue to dart out and wet his lip. He looked hungry. “Mercury must be in retrograde for the doorway to open.”

“Jesus…” Leda shook her head wearily. “You sound just like him.”

“That is because he was _right_ , Leda!” This was the first time the Professor had raised his voice and Leda was instantly on edge. Her hand shot to her bag again, feeling the comforting weight of the small cannister. Dr Morgan lowered his voice, conscious of the other guests staring. He spoke quickly, words almost running together in his bid to get them out. “Your father was _right_. I have spent years- _years_ carrying on his research. My team and I made a breakthrough in Timbuktu just as he said we might. The hieroglyphs in the cave showed the first planet doubled, one spinning forward, one spinning backward. It mimicked the illusion of Mercury in retrograde.”

Dr Morgan ran a hand over his mouth, his excitement building. “The island your father spoke about? It’s _real_. We modified our scanners and ran them during Mercury’s retrogradation. A blip showed up on the system. It’s blurry and disappears when Mercury is back to normal, but we’ve run the tests for three years. The island is real, Leda. It exists.”

Leda blinked quickly, suddenly feeling lightheaded. How was the island real? And _how_ was she still talking about Mercury?

“How- what-” Leda’s mumbling was cut off swiftly.

“Richard was right. The island is real and is only visible during the retrograde. And if he was right about that then I suspect he is also right about knowing something about your family that ties you all to the Vortice.”

“My- My _family_?” Leda grew guarded and her smile slipped form her mouth. She shook off the stupor of hearing that the island she had always thought her dad had made up may possibly be real. “What do you know about my family?”

“That your father was right. Even when they laughed at him. Even when they accused him of kil-”

“ _Stop_.” Leda interrupted. She didn’t want to hear the next sentence. Not when she knew it by heart already.

Dr Morgan’s eyes dimmed, and he ran his tongue over his bottom lip.

“Your father had a… theory. One he told me before- well. Just before.” Dr Morgan avoided Leda’s narrowed eyes. He spoke very carefully, each word now weighted. “About your family having ties to the Vortices. It may be true. It may not be true. But there have been stories.”

“What stories?” Leda asked quickly. Despite herself she was suddenly curious.

“A woman- found just outside of the Triangle’s boundaries. A fishing ship picked her up in 1893. And of course, as it is now, Bermuda is still a British colony so…”

Dr Morgan trailed off, allowing Leda to piece together what he was saying.

“You’re saying that I- that _we_ might be descended from a woman who was spat out by a supposed active Vortice?”

Dr Morgan shrugged. “The research is there.”

“That…is the _stupidest_ thing I’ve ever heard.” Leda said, and, deciding that she had had enough stood up so abruptly that Dr Morgan’s wine glass wobbled as she straightened.

“What? What are you-” Dr Morgan looked at her, startled. His hand steadied his glass and he gaped up at her like a fish out of water.

“This is ridiculous! I came here to talk to you about-” Leda huffed and started again. “I came here to ask you to leave me alone and now you’re feeding me some bullshit about a family legend an invisible island and a mad man’s theory on space and time travel!”

Leda shook her head when Dr Morgan didn’t respond.

“Look. I get it.” Her voice was hard. “You believe him and that’s great. Go and fly to Bermuda and do what you need to do but I don’t want any part of it. Just- Just don’t contact me again, ok? Forget you ever found me.”

Dr Morgan watched her as she slipped her bag onto her shoulder and stepped away from the booth. Leda thought that would be the end of it and he’d let her go but his voice stopped her in her tracks.

“Haven’t you ever just once wondered if he was _right_ , Leda?” He asked.

She turned back to look at him, her guard up. He hadn’t moved but his shoulders had slumped, and his fingers were fiddling with the stem of his wine glass. Despite her desire to leave, Leda walked back up to the mouth of the booth.

“Right?” Leda couldn’t help the bitter bark of laughter. She slapped her hand onto the table, wobbling Dr Morgan’s glass again. The nerve of him. How dare he? “ _Right_? Of course, my father wasn’t right. He wasn’t right because he wasn’t _well_. Now they call it a psychotic break brought about by tremendous levels of stress and grief. Back then I’m sure he was just lucky not to be called ‘coo-coo’.”

Dr Morgan finally looked up at her, and without any right to be, he looked about as sad as Leda suddenly felt. It made anger mingle with her sadness. What right did he have to be sad? It wasn’t _him_ who had to suffer. _He_ didn’t lose him mum and his dad all within a year of one another. _He_ didn’t have to change his name and move away from everything he had known and make it by himself with only a couple quid to his name.

He had no right. No _right_.

Dr Morgan’s eyes roamed her face and though he looked like he wanted to say something, he kept quiet.

“My dad-” Leda broke off, swallowing against the wobble in her voice and the saliva that had gathered in her mouth. Tears pricked her dry eyes and she resisted the urge to rub them away. She knew she should stop talking but it was like she couldn’t stop. It all came spilling out of her like word vomit and she wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince him or herself of her dad’s wrongness.

“My dad wasn’t right, Dr. Morgan. The Vile Vortices? They don’t exist and they certainly aren’t portals to other worlds. Because that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You want to go to another world. Well, I’ll tell you what I told my dad when I was sixteen and he was in a jail cell. There aren’t multiple worlds. There’s just this one. You only get one. So don’t waste it by chasing some impossible dream built on science fiction!”

Dr Morgan sat back against his side of the booth, laying both his hands into his obscured lap. Leda expected him to be startled but what she didn’t expect was the look of pity on his face.

“But my dear,” He said quietly. Leda felt guilty and she grimaced at his tone. “Even if he isn’t right, haven’t you ever just wanted to _believe_ in him?”

Now it was Leda’s turn to gap at him. She could feel the eyes of the other patrons flickering at her back and she slid back into the booth, feeling tired.

Her chest felt tight. It was a familiar ache. It blossomed just under her ribs and squeezed her heart with hot hands.

She wanted to tell the Professor that she _couldn’t_ believe her dad. Because if she believed him now, then he had been telling the truth the whole time and she was the horrible daughter who had locked him away. She couldn’t believe him because then that would mean he was right about her mother. That she wasn’t just dead, she was gone and that was infinitely worse than just plain old dead. And if that was true then she had spent ten years mourning a woman who might need her help and locking up the one person who knew how to find him. But what she wanted to say and what actually came out were two very different things.

“I can’t-” Leda’s throat was thick, and she swallowed despite it restricting on itself. “I _can’t_ , Dr Morgan. I can’t.”

“I know, Leda.” His voice was so soft, Leda strained to hear him. “I understand.”

But how could he possibly ever understand her?

A throat cleared beside them and Leda spied Mona standing by their table. She was holding a pad of paper and though she smiled at them, Leda could see the concern at the corners of her eyes.

“Is everything alright?” Mona might have been looking at her but Leda was pretty sure the woman was only asking Dr Morgan.

“Are you ready to order?” Mona asked, false pep in her voice. It jarred horribly with the gloom that had covered their conversation and Leda quickly rubbed at her eyes, sniffing loudly.

“I- I don’t want anything.” Leda said and coughed into her hand as Dr Morgan denied food as well.

“Just call me over if you need anything. Or if anything is…wrong.” Mona said with a large smile as she walked back to her station. Leda watched her go and then turned back to the Professor.

“So how’d you find me, anyway?” She asked much calmer than she had been before. Mona’s appearance had broken her anger. She felt it drain out of her quickly. All the talk of her dad and thinking about her mum had sapped her energy and her ability to sustain annoyance with Dr Morgan.

“I have friends in high places.” Dr Morgan said with a waggle of his eyebrows. His try for humour was corny and embarrassing but Leda appreciated him trying enough that she granted him a small laugh.

“We’ve met before, you know.” Leda frowned and Dr Morgan nodded, taking a sip from his wine glass. “Yes. You were young, I’m not sure how old. Your parents were having a party. It was summer and you had three missing teeth that you refused to let me touch in case the tooth fairy smelled me and thought you were trying to cheat her.”

Leda’s laugh was more genuine this time and Dr Morgan joined her. It was a jolly sound, and his shoulders shook. He laughed with his whole body just like her dad used to.

She didn’t remember him, but she had vague memories of being obsessed with the tooth fairy and whether or not she could deny you bounty by way of smell were familiar. It was enough to convince her on his truthfulness. They lapsed into a not pleasant silence, but an easier one, nonetheless.

“Why would you need me, anyway?” Leda asked suddenly, rousing Dr Morgan from where he had been staring at the empty table. “I’m not a scientist or a professor like you or my dad. I’m barely even a junior surgeon. If the Vortices even exist in the capacity you and my dad seem to think they do, I’m nothing to do with them. I couldn’t help you even if I wanted to.”

Dr Morgan nodded. “No, you’re not. But every expedition needs a doctor.”

Leda smiled glumly. “I meant what I said earlier. I can’t come with you, Dr Morgan. But… I hope you find what you’re looking for and I hope- I hope you prove him right. For his sake.”

She stood up, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. Looks like ‘just-in-case’ hadn’t come after all.

Dr Morgan stood quickly and wavered awkwardly on his side of the booth.

“If you change your mind, I’ve booked you a seat on a flight leaving in three days time from Gatwick Airport. We’ll be gone two weeks at most.” He said.

Leda didn’t bother to reply. She smiled again and, in a fit of sympathy and a little bit of guilt, she patted his hand gently.

“Goodbye, Dr Morgan. Please don’t contact me again.”

He nodded and she got all the way to the door before he called out to her again.

“The flight leaves at two o’clock! Gate 4!” Leda cringed and hurried past Mona shaking her head even as he shouted after her. “I’ll wait for you as long as I can, Leda!”

Leda rolled her eyes as she left, he would be waiting a damn long time if she had any say.

Of _course_ she wasn’t going. What idiot flew halfway across the world on a hunch that her crazy dad was maybe right? She had already made up her mind. She wasn’t going. No way, Jose. But that didn’t stop her booting up her rickety computer when she got home and searching up the quickest way from her house to Gatwick and how many liquids you could take through security. But only because she was curious. Not that she was even considering taking the Professor up on his offer. Because that would be crazy. Wouldn’t it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a mammoth chapter! I’m not completely happy with it but I’m going on holiday this week and I didn’t want to wait until after I got back to upload it. I can’t say when I’ll be uploading next so I’ve given you this instead to keep you going! I hope you enjoyed it. I know it’s a lot of exposition and I think I’ll go back and try and edit it all together in a smarter way but for now enjoy this info dump lol. Thank you so much for taking the time to read and review, I appreciate it so much. Thank you for for all the hits and kudos. It means the world to me. I hope everyone has a great week.   
> Novaer,  
> Aobh x


	4. Chapter Four

The next morning, Leda was late for work. Instead of rushing through her morning routine like she normally would, she pulled out a cardboard box from under her bed and rifled through the stack of old papers. There was a picture she hadn’t been able to get out of her head all night and when she finally pulled it out into the light, her hand shook. 

She was young and gap-toothed, partially hiding under the large oak table that had been in her childhood kitchen. Leda squinted, noticing a small pouch clutched in her younger versions lap and Dr Morgan’s story about her obsession with the tooth fairy came to mind.  In the picture her parents were kneeling either side of her. Leda skimmed quickly over her mum, only allowing herself enough time to register her mum’s hair and the shape of her cheek before she hastily looked away. Behind them, a row of professors each held up a glass in cheers, their happy smiles frozen in time. Leda had never really paid attention to who was there that day, but when she saw him, she wanted to smack herself in the face. Because there he was, just where he said he’d be. Dr Morgan was stood to the left of the group, his white hair unmistakable. It was as wild then as it was now despite the twenty-year gap.

The truth of the situation sent her head spinning and she hadn’t realised she was calling someone until her boss’s voice came through her mobile’s speaker.

“I’m really sorry, Annette.” Leda found herself saying. She was on autopilot, her mouth speaking before she could even fully register what was happening. Dr Morgan’s past-self smiled up at her from the picture and something like fear bubbled in her gut. The lie came before Leda could even fully make it up.  

“I’ve got a family emergency.” She said, shakily putting the picture back into the box. “It-It’s my dad. I still have all my holiday left over. I just need three weeks. Four at the most. Please. He’s all I have left.”

Why did she just say that? She had already told herself that she wasn’t going on this mad adventure. So why was she lying to her boss about needing time off?

There was no immediate response. Annette obviously wasn’t happy. Late notice and three to four weeks of holiday after she already let her go home early the other day? And from Leda of all people, who hadn’t taken any holiday in two years and who had never mentioned a father or any family that was alive let alone any who may be dying? Yeah, Leda imagined Annette had a lot to swallow and only twenty seconds in which to do it. But Leda couldn’t bring herself to feel sorry for her. Her stuttering fear was rapidly turning into a giddy excitement. It helped to clear the fog from her brain and she felt more in control of herself than she had in all of the last week. She pushed the box off her lap and kicked it back under her bed with a fuzzy-sock’d foot.

“Well. Leda. This is-” Annette stopped herself and sighed heavily down the line. Leda could imagine her rubbing her forehead like she did whenever they had a particularly difficult patient. “It’s your father, Leda. Of course you can have the time off.”

Leda was about to argue when Annette’s words registered in her brain.

“I- _Thank you_. Thank you, Annette. I’m so grateful.” Leda breathed.

“Just keep me updated. If you need more time let me know and I’ll sort it. Leda, I hope he-”

“Yeah. Me too.” Leda interrupted, already eyeing the clothes hanging from her rickety rail. She doubted puffer jackets and cardigans would be appropriate for a tropical island that didn’t exist in the North Atlantic. She’d have to go to _Primark_. There was no way she was sweating her tits off on an honest to God adventure. It was going to be stressful enough without her having to worry about sweat patches too. Not that she was actually _going_ , off course. This was all hypothetical.

“Take care, Leda.” Annette said and Leda felt a stab of guilt at how sad she sounded for her when her Dad wasn’t even dying.

“Uh- thanks, Annette, I…I really appreciate everything you’ve ever done for me. This is-” Leda didn’t know why it felt like she was saying goodbye, so she cleared her throat and swallowed awkwardly. “I just want to thank you. I’ll keep in touch.”

Annette said goodbye and hung up and Leda, her lie to Annette sitting heavy on her chest, grabbed her purse from her desk and jammed her feet into her cheap trainers. If she paused, even for one second, to think about how she had just lied to her boss and how she was going to buy new clothes for a trip she definitely wasn’t going on she would change her mind. Even though she wasn’t going, that is.

Leda chanced a look to the box that was peaking out from beneath her bed and the picture of Dr Morgan smiling with her parents.

She _definitely_ wasn’t going.

“I’m going to the shops, Molly!” Leda called as she practically ran to the front door. She needed new clothes anyway. So what if her next few purchases were hiking boots and cami tops? You needed those in London too. It wasn’t at all because she was about to upend all the work she had put into starting a new life by travelling to an island that didn’t exist with a mad man. Of _course_ not.

 

**…**

 

“Hi, Miss Gauling. It’s Milda again. I’m sorry. But he won’t come to the phone.”

Leda growled as she stuffed all her new clothes into a small suitcase that she had bought from _Argos_ the night before. The phone was hot and nestled against her shoulder and eye and she had to resist the urge to scream as she accidentally jammed her toe on her shitty wardrobe.  

This was the fifth time in two days that she had rung and the fifth time her dad had refused to speak to her.

“I know- Ok. Fine. Look. Can you pass on a message for me?” She asked as she picked up a white envelope from her desk and shoved it into her old backpack. It had come the previous day, no name on the front and no return address, just like the one Dr Morgan had sent before. But this time there was a sticky note attached that said:

 _02:00_  
Gatwick North Terminal  
Wednesday

She hadn’t opened it yet because (even though she still wasn’t going) if she read more about what she was _maybe_ doing, she probably wouldn’t continue to do it.

Her phone buzzed and she dropped the suitcase she had been struggling to close to see an alert on the screen. Her cab was outside. She did a quick once over of the room before grabbing her coat and patting her back pocket three times to make sure her passport was there even though it had been there four minutes ago when she last checked it.

“Yes, Miss Gauling. What would you like the message to say?” Milda’s voice brought her back as she locked her bedroom door behind her.

Molly was no where to be found when as she dragged her comically small but overstuffed suitcase to the front door. Leda barely remembered to drop the note she had written for her on the hallway table before she was out the door, huffing as she dragged her suitcase down the steps before she handed it to the insistent cab driver. She hoped Molly would be ok without her. The note she had left her was basically just a list of local takeaways and the various weekly deals they had. It was the least she could do on such short notice. She was scared Molly would try and survive on full fat milk and handfuls of cornflakes alone.

“Tell him- tell him I’m going to the place.” Leda said quickly as she slid into the car and shut her the door behind her.

“Gatwick Airport North Terminal?” The cab driver asked when he got into the driver’s seat.

Leda nodded and mouthed _sorry_ as she pointed to her phone. She clipped her seatbelt into place and the driver peeled away from the curb.

The high speed would usually bother her but she had been in constant motion for two full days and she wasn’t about to slow down now. Lest she actually think about what she (wasn’t) doing and ask the cabbie to turn back around.

“Tell him I’m going to the Vortice and that I’ll see him when I get back and to stay out of trouble. Tell him… We can _both_ go home when I get back. Together.”

“Alright Miss Gauling. Anything else?”

“Nah. Sorry- no. You’re amazing, Milda. Thanks a lot.” Leda said before hanging up.

The cab driver caught her eye in the rear-view mirror as he sped down the dark street. It was 11.30pm on a Monday night and the streets were empty.

“Skiving off work for a cheeky holiday?” The cab driver asked, and Leda offered him a strained smile through the mirror.

“Yeah,” she muttered turning to stare out at the dark streets illuminated intermittently by orange streetlights. “Something like that.”

 

**…**

 

" _Don’t_ say ‘I told you so’." Leda muttered as she marched past Dr Morgan and two new guys to self-check her bags in, boarding pass in hand. There were barely any other passengers around her and the airport was so quiet at that time that she could hear the small squeak of her new boots every step she took. Totally different from her vague memories of holidays as a child and the chaos of London airports at the beginning of the summer holidays. Clearly, early morning flights in the middle of April weren’t all that popular. Imagine that.

Now that she was here, it was a little hard to keep up the whole ‘I’m not going’ spiel that had kept her sane over the past three days. Instead she had a revolving mantra of ‘ _What are you doing?_ ’ going through her head at lightspeed. Her actions up to that point had been so far out of character that she wasn’t even sure she was in the same book anymore.

"I wouldn't _dream_ of it, Ms Gauling." Dr Morgan called to her with a smug smile. He was sandwiched between two men Leda had never seen before. They dwarfed him in height, and if it wasn’t for the fact that neither of them looked alike, it might have almost looked like two guys taking their granddad on holiday. And not, y’know, on a trip to a reality-flitting island in the middle of the Bermuda triangle.  

Leda snatched her ticket from the machine and made her way to the professor and his two companions. One was a smiling brunette and the other a bored looking red head. How you could be bored while off on a secret expedition to prove or disprove the theory of time and relative space travel was beyond Leda.

"This her?" The red head grunted and jerked his chin in her direction as though moving his hands was too much effort. His green eyes roamed over her and Leda felt her annoyance spike under his un-subtle evaluation of her. He scoffed when they caught eyes and angled his body away from her; clearly, he had found her lacking.

"Yes, yes!" Dr Morgan said excitedly and gestured towards her. "This is Dr Leda Gauling. Roberts daughter."

“Uh. I go by Ackerman, Doc. Leda Ackerman.” Leda said, shooting Dr Morgan an annoyed look that he promptly ignored.

The other man, a brunette, equally as tall as the red head smiled sweetly at her before he frowned, confusion marring his pretty smile.

"Ackerman?" He asked, looking to Dr Morgan as though the old man was speaking in tongues. Leda smiled tightly when he looked back to her.

"I changed my name a while ago." She explained in a rush. Better to get it out of the way now and not ten minutes into a nine-hour night flight.

"Why?" He asked. If Leda didn't know any better, she’d say he looked a little offended.

" _You_ try getting a bunch of scientists to take you seriously when your last name is _Gauling_." She scoffed.

Dr Morgan, obviously worried with the way the introductions were quickly going south, cleared his throat and stepped sideways to let a family by. The toddler was snoozing on his mother’s shoulder and Leda’s eyes lingered on the way the mum held her son, rubbing soft circles onto his back. She could vaguely remember her own mother doing the same thing and her back twitched against the phantom touch the memory brought.

"Yes. Ahem. Well. Leda, this is Howard Cullen, my research assistant." He pointed to the brunette and then to the red head. "And this is Dr Julian Briggs. A Geologist from the University of Cambridge."

Howard held out his hand for her to shake and Leda took it gingerly. His hand swallowed hers and he shook it so enthusiastically that she had to tug it back a few times before he released her.

Julian only raised his eyebrow and nodded by way of greeting. He seemed _delightful_. Leda looked back towards the exit. Was it too late to go back?

"Great. Now we’re all friends should we get a move on?" Julian muttered, clearly done with introductions. He turned on his heel and stalked to the escalator.

"You heard him, Doc." Leda sighed, and walked past Dr Morgan and Howard to follow Julian.

Security was a breeze and Leda was starting to see the appeal of flying at night, despite probably not being able to sleep for the next week or so, the relaxed security and general experience was way better than the screaming waves of stress that came with flying at the beginning of July.

They had a while to wait before they could board the plane, so the disjointed group all crammed themselves onto the small benches by the gate. Leda plopped herself down next to Dr Morgan forcing Howard and Julian to sit opposite them. Julian slid down his seat until he was comfortable and popped his headphones in almost immediately. Clearly, he didn’t want to talk.

Leda hugged her backpack to her chest. Slumped in her chair, she allowed her eyes to close. This was the first time she had permitted herself to relax in three days and she tried to ignore the impulse to pick up her carry-on and run back to Bermondsey.

All was blissfully silent for a moment before Howard began to talk and ruined the peace for Leda.

"I've read all your fathers research you know." He said and Leda cracked her eyes open to watch him warily.

"Oh." Leda said, unenthusiastically. One of the things she hated more than being judged for her father’s mental ramblings was _talking_ about his mental ramblings. "Did you?"

"Yes. His theories on specific geological places. Or- the Vile Vortices are truly radical." Howard rambled, leaning forward in his seat.

"Yeah," Leda couldn't help her snort of derision. She stretched her legs and kicked them out, narrowly missing Julian’s equally stretched pair of long legs. " _Radical_ is a word for it."

Uncaring or unknowing of Leda's lack of enthusiasm in the subject Howard, continued oblivious. His dark brown eyes shined under the yellow airport lighting and he grinned.

"It’s just _truly_ fascinating. Truly. As a theory it’s-”

"Bonkers?" Leda interrupted.

Dr Morgan shot her an annoyed look, taking time out from looking at the planes taking off to silently reprimand her. She shrugged at him, in a ‘ _what am I supposed to do about it’_ way.

"Ah- well. Perhaps to someone who didn't understand it, but the science is correct. The calculations correct. If he’s right-”

" _If_." Lexa muttered under her breath, interrupting again. She shifted in her seat, feeling uncomfortable and Dr Morgan gave her another withering look that she ignored.

“If he’s right" Howard continued, ignoring her remark. "It would change the course of history. It would change _everything_ we currently know about Physics. "

Julian, who had his head down opposite and his earplugs in shook his head.

“And with what happened to your-" Leda shot Howard a warning loom that he ignored and tried to carry on. Luckily, the flight attendants voice coming through the PA system saved her from Howard mentioning something she _definitely_ didn’t want to speak about when on the verge of making the single worst decision of her life.

" **Now boarding flight 09A45 to L.F. Wade International Airport, Bermuda. This is a boarding call for our First-Class passengers. If you are in possession of a first-class boarding pass, please make your way to the desk for last boarding pass check and boarding.** "

“Saved by the bell.” Julian muttered as he stood up. Leda had thought he wasn’t listening, what with his headphones being in, but clearly, he had been.

"They’re calling first class.” Leda said, frowning as Julian stood and shouldered his very cool-looking backpack. It put Leda’s twenty-year old frayed rucksack to shame. “What are you doing?"

Julian looked at her like she was an idiot and who knew, maybe she was. She was there wasn’t she? Only an idiot lied to their work and took a month off all while denying their actions to themselves to prove whether their cooky dad was right about space and time travel.

"The Professor splurged on our tickets. Didn't you read the pack?" Julian asked.

Leda, already feeling attacked, shook her head and stood up with a scowl. First class? Where had the Dr Morgan gotten _that_ kind of money? Howard, seeing her confusion and taking pity, filled in the block in her knowledge.

"The Aether Group is funding us. They paid for the tickets.” He said.

Julian clicked his neck before he walked to the desk and threw over his shoulder: "Yeah, seems like big pharma doesn't want us travelling as peasants."

Dr Morgan fiddled with the strap of his satchel before he too made his way to the desk.

"I'll explain on the plane." He murmured as he passed her. Howard was hot on his Birkenstocks, offering a quick smile before practically tripping over his own feet to walk in step with The Professor.

Leda sighed and, instead of following, looked longingly to the exit back to the main airport.

She could still leave. There was still time to stop the madness of going to Bermuda. She could go home to Molly and watch her drink milk and eat dry cereal separately and do a shift at St. Philomena's. Everything could still go back to normal.

Her parents’ face filled her mind.

Her dad, all pulled and drawn and tired and sad. And her mother, lost to time itself. If she didn’t go, he would be stuck in _The Eyrie_ until the day he died and her mother- Leda swallowed deeply. She owed it to her mother to go. If there was even a _slim_ chance – and she wasn’t saying there was – that her father may actually be right, then she couldn’t just abandon her. And even if her dad wasn’t right, didn’t she owe it to herself to finally put what niggling doubt she had with her mother’s disappearance to rest?

"Ms Gauling?" Dr Morgan was waiting on the other side of the desk, already checked through. His voice roused her from her last-minute doubts, and she turned to look at him. He must have seen something in her face, however, because he made to walk towards her, his journey being cut off by the PA speakers.

 **"Last call for first class passengers for flight 09A45 to L.F. Wade International Airport, Bermuda.** "

Howard hovered behind The Professor, nervousness playing around the corners of his mouth. Julian was nowhere in sight. He was probably already comfortably seated in first class, unconcerned with Leda’s bout of internal confusion.

"Ms Gauling?" Dr Morgan called again. His hand wavered in mid-air, his body poised to march to her if she hesitated any longer. Leda recognised the same look of worry and desperation in his face that he had worn at the restaurant.

With another sigh she gave one last look at the exit, now filled with other passengers all looking around, wondering if they were in the right place. Well. Leda _was_ in the right place. She could do this. She _had_ to do it. For her dad. For her mum and also- well also for her.

"Coming." She said, turning away from the passengers and her last chance home. The way back was closed. There was only forward, now.

 

**…**

 

"So who is else joining us?" Leda asked, as she pulled out the blank envelope she had stuffed in her backpack before leaving. She held it up to Dr Morgan and shook it slightly before ripping it open. “This is your handiwork, I assume.”

They were twenty minutes into their flight and the lights were dim in the cabin. Leda had lucked out and gotten a booth by the window, as had Howard who was behind her. Dr Morgan and Julian weren’t so lucky and were in aisle booths. Though who could really be unlucky traveling first class was yet to be seen.

Julian’s pod was next to hers in the aisle and he had forgotten to close the door and she could see him out of the corner of her eye.  He was slumped in his seat, eyes closed and headphones in. He hadn’t said a word since the plane took off and Leda assumed, she would be free of any of his snarky remarks for the rest of the flight. Some miracles, and all that.

“I delivered the envelope, Ms Ackerman.” Howard piped up from behind her and she rolled her eyes.

“Ever heard of a return address?” she muttered as she tipped the envelope over her lap. A sleek black folder slipped out and she assumed this was the mysterious pack she should have read before she pressed pause on her entire life to go on a mad adventure. “And just Leda is fine, Howard. What’s with all this ‘Ms’ stuff? I’m not ninety yet.”

"Two others will be joining us.” Dr Morgan’s voice floated from behind her to answer her earlier question. She could just about hear him over the whirring hum of the planes jet engines. “A Stanford Botanist by the name of Sarah Carmichael and an Aether Group representative called Astrid Babineaux."

Leda _hmm’d_ at the back of her throat and ran her slim brown fingers over folders cover. There was a weird symbol on the front, two overlapping triangles, one pointing north and one pointing south.  Written just below it were the words, **THE AETHER GROUP** in white, bold typeface.

"What is this Aether Group, anyway?" Leda asked, flicking through the pack quickly. She spied a _Terms and Conditions_ and _Personal Liability_ page, and skimmed over them both. "My dad never mentioned them."

"They're a secret society of hood wearing masons who want to take over the world by discovering and controlling portals to other worlds." Julian said as though talking about the weather.

Leda rolled her eyes and looked over at him. His eyes were still closed, and his headphones were still in but clearly he had been listening the whole time.

“Is pretending to sleep just your thing?" She asked, turning back to flip past another, probably important, page entitled _Non Disclosure Agreement_.

She saw Julian grin out of the corner of her eye. This was the first time she had seen him do anything other than look utterly bored and if he wasn’t so annoying, she’d say smiling suited him. His teeth were very right but he had a snaggle tooth that skimmed his bottom lip. Strangely enough it made him look a little more human to her.

"It’s not my fault you talk loudly enough to wake the dead." Julian shot back; eyes still closed.

Despite her mild annoyance with him, Leda snorted.

"They're not a secret society." Howard supplied quietly from behind her.

Leda set aside the folder and kneeled on her (admittedly) very comfortable seat and leaned over the back of her booth to look at him. He set down the book she hadn’t realised he had been reading and looked about the painfully empty first-class cabin as though worried someone would overhear. It was just them and three other people scattered about the ostentatiously lavish space. And she doubted the businessman in 1A or the glamorous woman in 2C gave two shits about The Aether Group and whether they were a secret society or not.  

At Leda’s raised eyebrow and unconvinced “ _Oh?_ ” Howard continued.

“They’re a research group founded in Paris in 1612 by Sir Henrie Babineaux. Their motto is: Pour L'amélioration de L'humanité. It means-”

“For the Betterment of Mankind.” Leda said with a frown. How did she know that? Hearing the French phrase triggered something in her memory. The words and their translation were familiar, but she couldn’t place where she had heard them before. Maybe her dad _had_ mentioned them. Years and years before everything had gone to crap.

Howard smiled at her, not seeming to mind her interruption. “That is the motto, yes. They’ve been under the radar for most of their existence. Hence the preconception that they are, in Mr Brigg’s words, ‘hood wearing masons’.”

Leda chuckled despite herself and shook off the peculiar feeling of Déjà vu at having heard the Research Group’s motto.

“How’d you know all this stuff?” She asked, cocking her head to the side. Sure, Howard looked like a total nerd, but she wasn’t sure how broad his knowledge was. Maybe he just _really_ liked seventeenth century secret societies.

“Oh. It’s in the uh- it’s in the pack.” Howard said, with another one of his small smiles.

“Which you’d know if you actually read it.” Julian said behind her. Leda rolled her eyes at Howard and enjoyed the way his smile widened. His hero-worship of her dad aside, he seemed pretty nice. Maybe when they got back to the real world she’d ask him to go for coffee with her. Or maybe not. Leda hadn’t really been that good at keeping friends. Molly was practically the closest thing she had and all she really did was make sure the pale girl ate normal food once in a while. Turns out being paranoid that someone would find out who she really was and judge her for having a crazy dad and a dead mum who died in suspicious circumstances really discouraged her from making long-term relationships.

“I read it.” Leda said, feeling a little petulant.

“Skimming doesn’t count, newbie.” Julian said. She didn’t need to turn around to know he was grinning while he ragged on her. Maybe she should be happy. If he felt like he could make fun of her, maybe it meant he was trying to bond in his weird, all-boys-private school way. He had even given her a demeaning nick name to make her feel like part of the team. Lucky her.

“How would you know?” She barked back. “You had your eyes closed.”

“I don’t need eyes to know that you-” Julian began.

“Alright, children. Don’t make me put any of you on the naughty step.” Dr Morgan interrupted, and Leda turned to see him barely paying attention. He had a half-empty glass of amber liquid in his hand and his glasses were low on his nose as he poured over a messy pile of papers.

Instead of finding the sight amusing, her gut twisted in a horrible way. He reminded her so much of her dad. She _wished_ that he had picked up her call. It would have been nice to hear his voice. She coughed awkwardly, feeling the heat of Howard’s eyes on the side of her face and tried to change the subject.

“So this Astrid lady that’ll be joining us,” she said quickly, avoiding Howard’s eye to keep up an air of nonchalance. “Is she related to Henrie Babineaux, the guy that founded The Aether Group?”

Dr Morgan looked up from his reading materials and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

"Yes. Distantly.” He said. “Henrie was the first son of five. He had no children, so it fell to his brothers’ descendants. Astrid, I believe, comes from the youngest son, Thibault. Seventh son of the seventh son and all that."

Leda _hmm’d_ again and twisted slightly to look back at the black folder still lying on her pod’s desk.

Why was an ancient research group funding an expedition into her dad’s work? And if they were so interested, why hadn't he ever mentioned them before?

"Why is it called The Aether Group then, and not The Babineaux Group?” Leda asked, turning back to flit her gaze between Howard and Dr Morgan. “Isn’t naming a company after yourself all the rage for one percenter’s?"

"Because in classical elements, Aether is the fifth." Howard supplied.

"She doesn't speak _Marvel_ , Cullen." Julian butted in. Leda rolled her eyes again. A response she was coming to realise was a natural reaction to whenever she was unfortunately within earshot of anything he said.

"Aether is the fifth element.” Howard elaborated. He too rolled his eyes at Julian’s comment and shared a secret smile with Leda before continuing. “There is Earth, Fire, Water and Air. And then there’s Aether."

“Ok. Cool. But what _is_ Aether, then?” Leda asked, still confused.

"It’s above Air. Ancient Greek’s used to think that it was the air that the God’s breathed. Particles of it exist in all of the universe. Linking everything together. You might have heard it being referred to as _Quintessence_. Hypothetically, using Aether and it’s permeance, you could theoretically access any point in history in any part of the universe should you, also in theory, be able to establish a link between each particle. It was used as a way of explaining the travel of light within the vacuum of space. And so scholars and I suppose Henrie Babineaux, began to think of its uses of travel in other ways. To other places. Or-”

"-to other _worlds_." Leda finished for him with a frown.

So an ancient research group that she had never heard of before _just_ so happened to be named after some mystical fifth element that could enable travel through space and time and linked perfectly with her father’s research? An ancient research group, that is, that she had also never heard of before that _also_ funded the entire trip? Something wasn’t adding up. And although the suspicion was beginning to make her feel uncomfortable enough to want to go home, Leda steeled herself against it. She wasn’t much of an explorer or problem solver, but she guessed the easiest way to get to the bottom of something was to be right in the middle of it. Or it was the easiest way to end up seven leagues under the sea next to her missing mum. Either or.

"Yes, Ms Gauling." Dr Morgan said and Leda swivelled her gaze towards him. He took a sip from the glass he had been nursing and Leda’s frown deepened. What did he know? He must have been watching for a reaction though, because he nodded imperceptivity and offered her one of his mysterious smiles. "Another world precisely."

 

**…**

 

Sometime later, the lights in the cabin were practically off. Howard was sprawled sideways on his seat, mouth hanging open as he slept. He had forgotten to close his pod door and the flight attendant had to keep hopping over his feet as she made her way to and from Business class. Julian was awake and engrossed in some film he was watching. His intermittent jumps, coupled with his less than sunny disposition, Leda guessed it was some action horror monstrosity that had captured his attention.

Leda’s own screen was stuck on the little animated plane that showed you how far you had gotten in your journey. She had stared at it for hours, unable to sleep. When she turned to Dr Morgan, she found him already watching her. He nodded when he caught her eye.

“You really thought I would say yes to all this?” Leda’s asked quietly, conscious of disturbing the other passengers who she assumed were in various states of rest.

“No, quite the opposite.” He laughed gently. “I thought you wouldn’t come but I booked it anyway.”

Leda frowned and leaned further out of her pod. “How does that make any sense? You didn’t think I would come but you booked it anyway?”

Dr Morgan’s smile turned fond, and she wondered what it must have been like back before she was born, him and her dad working in a cramped office in Oxford, trying to change reality itself.

“Call it a leap of faith.” He said, tipping the last of his glass of scotch into his mouth. “I saw Richard in you. All his stubbornness and intelligence. But do you know what I also saw? Your mother. I didn’t think you would come, but I also knew that you would.”

Leda didn’t fully understand his explanation, but she couldn’t quite stop the pride that zinged through her at being compared to her mother.

“Thanks.” She mumbled, feeling embarrassed at how much joy it had caused her for anyone to see her mother in her and not just her coo-coo dad.

“You’re very welcome, Ms Gauling.” He said, reaching up to flick the stewardess light on. He held up his glass as she came rushing over to refill it. When she finished, she scuttled off back to wherever stewardesses went when they weren’t helping passengers (most likely a stasis chamber where the air pressure and dryness didn’t dry their skin or make their hair untidy).

“Are you ever going to call me Ms Ackerman?” Leda asked with a raise of her eyebrow.

Dr Morgan chuckled to himself and again, Leda wondered what it must have been like. Two young men trying to change the world, not even imagining what might come to pass.

Dr Morgan nodded to her chair, ignoring her question. “You should try and rest. The journey ahead won’t be easy.”

Leda nodded back and waved awkwardly at him before closing her little compartment door and lowering her chair into the bed.

“Yeah,” she grumbled to herself with a snort. “As if getting some sleep is gonna be any easier.”

She twisted on her side to punch and fluff her regulation pillows into something that resembled a discombobulated marshmallow, just how she liked it. She had just gotten settled into something resembling a caterpillar before she shot up into a sitting position and clicked the button to slide the door of her pod open.  

“Wait a second!” She squeaked, trying to untangle her legs from the blanket cocoon. Julian and Dr Morgan turned to stare at her with varying levels of confusion. “Did that pack say something about loss of _limbs_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Gosh! This took weeks to edit. I’m very sorry for how long it’s taken. This is another mammoth chapter and like the last one, I can’t say that I’m entirely happy with it. But it’s been so long and I’m tired of staring at it lol I’ve taken major liberties with what Aether actually is and how it links to the Vile Vortices so expect lots of rubbish science jargon that makes no sense in the future but sounds good because I am in no way an expert. 
> 
> I would like to take a moment to say how thankful I am for all of the kudos and hits and reviews! I’m so happy you’re all enjoying it and liking this dumb Indiana Jones-esque adventure I’m trying to tell. Thank you for your continued support and words of praise. I hope you continue to enjoy this story and that we have some fun along the way. Have a lovely week!  
> Novaer,  
> Aobh x


	5. Chapter Five

As soon as Leda stepped out of the air-conditioned airport onto the tarmac runway, the only thing she could think was:

Fuck it’s _**hot**_.

She was British. The ability to complain about anything was hardwired into her DNA. And that meant that a large portion of the year was spent moaning about the weather. It was too hot, too cold, too wet, too windy. And so on until she was ninety and ready to die or so the legend goes.

The point was, Leda was used to complaining about the weather. What she wasn’t used to was humidity that made it feel like she was walking through soup, and a temperature so high her hair curled almost upon contact with it. The temperature and air density was so extreme that any complaints Leda might have had quickly dried up along with all the water in her body.

She was definitely wearing too many layers.

“ _Shit_.” She muttered, awkwardly jimmying her backpack off so that she could practically rip her shirt off. Luckily, she’d had enough sense to wear a tank top underneath, but the instant relief of her bothered skin not touching the itchy material of her cheap shirt was so instantaneous that she paused for a moment, just revelling in the fact that she was free.

“Coming, Newbs?”

Julian bumped her shoulder as he passed, grinning. Leda nodded sluggishly and wondered whether it was a good thing he had shortened her nickname. She stuffed her shirt in her bag and waddled after, each step adding a new sheen of sweat on her forehead.

Astrid Babineaux and Sarah Carmichael were waiting on the tarmac next to a small private plane. It loomed ominously behind the two women, white and sleek. Had the plane her dad had tried to steal looked like it?

Leda had never been on, nor seen a private jet in real life before. However, their very existence had, fourteen years before, changed the course of her entire life. Her dad was in a psych ward in part because he had been apprehended trying to steal one, and now, fourteen years later here she was completing the trip he had never made. The parallels between herself and her father weren’t lost to her.  

Dr Morgan strolled to a stop and Leda took a deep breath in and out. Now was not the time to get freaked out by a plane, of all things. The weight of the air sat heavily on her shoulders and she sagged under it, wilting in the heat. Couldn’t they do their introductions _inside_ the thing that could keep them cool?

Dr Morgan turned and smiled at her, and she sighed. Clearly not.

“Ms Babineaux.” Dr Morgan greeted The Aether Group Representative with a welcoming smile and held out his hand for her to shake.  

The heir to the French secret society was easily the tallest out of all of them and when she shook Dr Morgan’s hand, she dwarfed his grip. A heavy mane of bushy dark hair framed a long, stern face and blue eyes peaked from under heavy brows. All in all, she was probably the closest Leda would ever get to ever meeting an actual Amazonian. Astrid’s unusual visage left Leda feeling a horrible combination of being terrified and a little infatuated. She seemed completely at ease with the heat and was even wearing a long tan jacket over cream slacks and a brown linen top with absolutely no creases. Leda frowned, who didn’t crease their linen? It was like four in the afternoon. Usually just looking at a piece of linen clothing was enough to make it crumple.

“You’ve met Julian and Howard before, in Timbuktu.” Dr Morgan said, gesturing towards Leda. Astrid’s heavy gaze slid towards her and Leda stupidly hoped the put together woman couldn’t see how much she was sweating. “But this is-”

“Leda Ackerman. Formally Leda Gauling.” Astrid interrupted in accented English. Leda smiled and held out her hand for Astrid to shake, a gesture that she pointedly ignored. Leda let her hand drop awkwardly back to her side and tried not to take offence. Maybe the French didn’t shake hands. There was probably some weird French proverb about frog legs and shaking hands she didn’t know about. Or something.

Astrid inclined her head by way of hello but did not smile.

“You are Robert’s daughter.” Robert? Leda thought in surprise. Since when was the French Amazonian on a first name basis with her dad? “The resemblance is remarkable. It is a pleasure.”

Leda hummed, hand itching at her side. “Yeah. Nice to meet you, too.”

There was something wrong with the way Astrid said her dad’s name. Like she knew him or something. But how could she? Her dad had been locked away for nearly fifteen years. Astrid only looked about five years older than her. It didn’t make any sense. Then again, neither did her dad’s theory to anyone with any sense of logic and yet here she was, about to get on a private jet to a mysterious island that probably didn’t exist. Plus, Astrid was part of an ancient secret society dedicated to tearing the rule book on possible physics apart that had access to hundreds of years of accumulated wealth. She probably had about fifteen private detectives at her disposal at any time. Forget knowing her dad’s first name, she probably knew what Leda last ate and what kind of toilet paper she bought.

The concept was a little unsettling, but she was only given a moment to dwell on it before Dr Morgan continued to plough on with the introductions.

“And this is Sarah Carmichael. The Botanist from Stanford I mentioned earlier. She was at the Timbuktu dig site as well.”

Huh. So everyone had been at Timbuktu. Years ago, she had read her dad’s ramblings during a particularly bad spell. Timbuktu was another Vortice; The Algerian Megalith, to be exact. She remembered her research into Dr Morgan and the news report of the Timbuktu expedition. Hadn’t it also mentioned something about The Aether Group? She could almost kick herself for not paying enough attention. As an Emergency Doctor the devil had always been in the details. She hadn’t been very good at keeping track of them, thus far. Looking up Dr Morgan had only been a few days before, a week, at most, but it felt like a lifetime had passed since before Dr Morgan had bustled into her life and royally jacked it up. Maybe having your life upended meant that you missed a couple things here and there. Unfortunately, now was not the time to be skimping on adding up the dots.

Sarah smiled and Leda returned the gesture a little weakly and shook her hand. The Botanist was Astrid’s opposite in every sense. Shorter than Leda and sporting a severe blonde bob, her lime eyes were kind, nestled into her soft, heart-shaped face.

“It’s such an honour to meet Robert Gauling’s daughter!” Sarah gushed. Leda’s smile twitched and she tried to take her hand back, but, oblivious, Sarah kept shaking it in her surprisingly strong grip. “After all this time and research with Dr Morgan. Aren’t you glad that we’re finally getting to the main Vortice?”

Leda coughed and tugged her hand back, flexing her crushed fingers.

“I- uh- Sure?” It sounded more like a question and she shot Dr Morgan a desperate look for help but the traitor merely looked on as if nothing was wrong.

Sarah looked a little perturbed but garnered back her pep quickly, smoothing over any confusion with another bright smile. “Don’t you-”

Leda was saved, yet again, by the metaphorical bell ringing. The private jet’s door slid open, and the steps descended onto the tarmac with a soft whoosh. A waft of cold air drifted over them from the cabin, and Leda sagged in on herself. Thank God. Thank _God_.

“Saved again, Newbs?” Julian piped up, adjusting his backpack and heading up the plane steps without waiting for anyone else. “What is this now, Oh for two?”

Leda rolled her eyes and jerked her chin towards the plane. “We getting on or what?”

Dr Morgan, who seemed to have a permanent smile on his face ambled along, Sarah and Howard close on his heels. It was just Astrid and herself left and Leda waited for the woman who was entirely over dressed to get on before her.

Astrid’s mouth twitched into a wan smile. "After you, mon amie." She gestured to the plane steps and as she did her coat flapped open. Leda spied a holster attached to her waist and what looked suspiciously like a handheld firearm.

What the _hell_ was she doing with a gun? What was The Aether Group expecting to encounter when they got to the island which Leda only half believed actually existed? And why would you need fire power for what was essentially a non-violent archaeological expedition?

Leda schooled her features into a weak smile and shrugged before hurriedly making her way up the steps into the cool cabin. ‘Representative’ her ass. Since when do _representatives_ pack heat?

There were only six seats on the plane and they all faced one another. Astrid strode past Leda as she paused by the doorway and took the seat closest to the cockpit on the left. Sarah sat opposite her on the right. Howard was buckling himself in beside Astrid with Dr Morgan across from him. Leda stuffed her backpack into the overhead locker and sat next to Dr Morgan in the seat closest to the door and Julian settled himself into the seat opposite her on Howard’s left.

The private jet was just as ‘private’ as it sounded. All plush creams accidented by deep mahoganies. Decanter crystal glasses stowed under everyone’s arm rests and- were those _jewels_ along the rim of the ceiling?

“Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen.” The pilots voice sounded as Leda clipped herself into the expensive seat that probably cost more than the entire contents of her painfully shabby bedroom back home. “My name is Paul Lockford and I’ll be your Captain today. Sitting next to me is Louise Hanquin and she will be our co-pilot. Please note, the fasten your seatbelt sign is on. Once we hit cruising altitude, I’ll switch that off and you can feel free to move about the cabin. It should take just under an hour to reach our destination, please prepare for take-off.”

Leda looked around as the others secured themselves. Sarah was currently doing a strange repetitive motion with her hands and muttering something under her breath. Astrid was watching her calmly as she crossed her long legs at the ankle. She had kept her trench coat on, and Leda wondered how she hadn’t passed out from heatstroke yet. Although if the Amazonian _did_ pass out Leda would be able to help her. Maybe if she showed she wasn’t some bumbling idiot everyone would stop looking at her like they weren’t quite sure why she was there. Not that _she_ really knew why she was there either.

 

*****

 

Take off was uncomfortable as it usually was and Leda had to chew three pieces of gum just to feel like she could hear anything. She didn’t have a book to read so she stared out of the window behind Julian’s head. His headphones were in again and his eyes were closed but Leda would put serious money down and bet that he was actually awake and just waiting for her to say something dumb that he could make fun of.

The quiet of the cabin was getting to her nerves, so Leda cleared her throat and asked for confirmation of something Dr Morgan had mentioned earlier.

“So you were all on the Timbuktu expedition together?”

Five pairs of eyes turned towards her, even Julian cranked his eyes open to stare at her with his usual bated breath for her to screw up.

Dr Morgan was nodding before anyone else had fully registered Leda’s question over the whir of the engines.

“Yes. It was us and another Aether Group representative. A Mister Dubois, if I remember correctly?”

Astrid grunted and cracked her neck on either side. “Oui.”

Leda nodded to no one in particular. Sarah caught her eye as the blonde paused her weird hand movements to swallow a pill with a swig from her silver water cannister.

Julian must have been watching her because he took it upon himself to explain.

“Valium. She’s a shitty flier.”

Sarah rolled her eyes and flipped him the bird. “Being afraid of crashing while trapped in a metal box that flies through the sky doesn’t make me a shitty flier, Julian.” Leda couldn’t help grinning. Other than the whole hero worship of her dad thing, if Sarah could bat it back to Julian, she would always have a vote from Leda’s court. “And anyway, I only took half of one. I don’t want a repeat of the Megalith thing.”

Julian barked out a laugh, crossing his arms over his broad chest as he sat back. The action popped out his headphones, but he made no effort to put them back in.

“The Timbuktu expedition was to confirm your father’s theory on Mercury’s retrogradation.” Dr Morgan continued, ignoring Julian and Sarah’s continued back and forth. The fasten the seatbelt sign flicked off and he wasted no time in unbuckling his seat. He pulled out the bottom of his arm rest and began pouring what looked like whiskey into one of the crystal glasses she had spied earlier.

“Which of course proved entirely correct.” He paused to take a sip. “It was a fruitful mission. Had I found you sooner, I would have asked you to come.”

Leda huffed a laugh. “I would have said no.”

Dr Morgan’s white, bushy eyebrows lifted high on his forehead.

“You said no to this trip too, remember?”

Leda’s smile dropped and she flopped back against her expensive seat.

“Don’t remind me.” She muttered, prompting Dr Morgan to chuckle.

Leda rolled her eyes and asked another question that had been bothering her. “What happened to that other guy? Mr Dubois? Why didn’t he come on this trip too?”

Leda thought she had said it quietly, but when Astrid answered before Dr Morgan, she realised she probably hadn’t spoken quietly enough.

“He was relieved of his position.” Astrid said as she fiddled with a brick phone in her lap. Leda frowned at it. Wasn’t she super rich? Why was she carrying a phone that looked like it predated a Nokia?

“Relieved of his position?” Leda echoed sceptically. “Because that doesn’t sound ominous at _all_.”

“There is nothing ominous about it, Ms Ackerman.” Astrid snipped, dark eyebrows lowering. Her frown cast a shadow over her eyes, and they darkened to denim. “Our interests did not line up with his and so he left The Group.”

‘Group’ or _secret society_ , if you were the tin-foil hat wearing type.

Howard was carefully avoiding her eye and when she turned to Dr Morgan, he had gone still in his seat, glass paused on its ascent to his waiting mouth. Clearly there was something more to do with Mr Dubois, but Leda thought she’d drop it for now. She could ask it when they were on The Island or more realistically, when they were back on Bermuda after realising that The Island didn’t exist and her dad really _was_ crazy.

Feeling a little attacked, Leda rolled her eyes and gestured to Astrid’s lap.

“And did you need firearms in Timbuktu as well?”  

Astrid quit fiddling with the brick phone and let it rest in her lap. She looked as unfazed as she had in the sweltering heat, even after just being called out for carrying a gun to what may essentially just be a big dig site filled with dinosaur bones.

“We are dealing with the unknown, Ms Ackerman. Precautions must be taken.”

“I thought this was just a research expedition.” Leda shot back.

A smile ghosted over Astrid’s face but did not touch her eyes as she shrugged her stiff shoulders. “Research can be dangerous.”

 

*****

 

The sky outside had grown dark during their journey and rain had been pelting the small window behind Julian’s head for a while. Leda had been staring at it for a few minutes, lost in her thoughts. The voice of the pilot coming from above her head ripped her from her daydreams with a start.

“Hello folks, this is your Captain speaking. We’re about twenty minutes away from our destination and will be beginning decent shortly. Got a bit of wind and rain coming up to our left but our flight path takes us around most of it. Normal turbulence is expected so I’ll pop that fasten seatbelt sign on for you just in case things get a bit bumpy. As a precaution, if you haven’t already, please do have a read of the safety manual and remember, life jackets are under your seats.”

The PA system clicked off and almost instantly the plane rattled a little bit. Dr Morgan and Astrid re-clipped their seatbelts as the fasten seatbelts signed loomed red over their heads. Leda clicked her tongue. Nothing to worry about her _ass_.

She rifled through her chairs side pocket to pull out the safety leaflet as the Captain suggested. Two basic animations of an adult woman and child greeted her. In one picture the woman was putting on the child’s lifejacket and didn’t have one on herself. There was a big X above this picture. In the second she had already attached her lifejacket and was helping attach her child’s. This had a big green tick and she rolled her eyes. She knew there was a good reason for the silly pictures, but she couldn’t help but think of _course_ the private airline’s thesis was to save yourself first.

“And you’re _sure_ this thing is safe?” Leda muttered as the plane shook again. She threw an accusatory glare at Dr Morgan who, despite the retched conditions, seemed to be well within his perpetually ever-present good mood.

Dr Morgan returned her glare with a calm smile. He had set aside his glass and his hands now rested comfortably in his linen trousered lap. To Leda, he looked like a perfect picture of peace and therefore _entirely_ out of place in the shaking plane.

“It’s only a little storm,” he remarked good naturedly, gesturing to Julian’s window as if to illustrate just how much she was overreacting. The sky outside had clouded to the point of near black and it was difficult to tell what was cloud and what was roiling sea below. An image of the plane falling into the sea zipped through her mind inconveniently. What was worse, dying by fire or drowning? Or both? Could planes still explode in water?

“A little bit of wind and rain won’t hurt you.” Dr Morgan remarked.

Leda gaped at him.

“’ _Little’_?”

On one hand, Leda knew she was probably being a bit silly. She _had_ flown before. She knew that turbulence and planes went hand in hand. But usually she was on a larger craft and she felt infinitely safer surrounded by two hundred other passengers than she did in the six-windowed, six-seater private jet she was currently trapped within.

The plane gave another lurch and she squeezed her fingers so hard around the arm rests that one of her distal phalanges popped painfully.

Sarah’s blonde head jerking caught her attention. She was fast asleep; the Valium having done its job a little too well. Leda envied her unbothered rest.

 “Though I would agree with you, Professor,” Howard piped up, lacing his fingers together under his chin. “It’s been a lot more than ‘a bit’ of rain. Hard to say, of course, without the use of a rain gauge but still easy to calculate.”  

Leda’s mouth hung open as he proceeded to confidently lay down some mental maths that had her head spinning.

“In this heavy rain it would take around three minutes to fill a one-hundred-and-fifty-millimetre gauge, with a funnel area of seventy-eight point five five. If you divided fifty by the funnel area and then multiplied that number by ten, you would get six point three six five millimetres of rain. Considering the fact that it’s been raining for about twenty minutes or so, that’s,” here he paused and looked at a point just beyond Leda’s head as he did the calculations. “Forty-four point five five five millimetres of rain. Which in conversion to inches is-”

“A lot of fucking rain, you big nerd.” Julian interrupted with a laugh. He had twisted his head to look at Howard as he spoke and was grinning, his snaggle tooth catching his full bottom lip. But he hadn’t said it cruelly, and Leda spied some admiration to his blue gaze as he high fived Howard.

“Well- yes.” Howard used his high-five hand to push his square glasses up his Roman nose. “That is essentially what I was going to say but-”

“Howard,” Leda interrupted. She was still trying to wrap her head around what he had said. “You’re fucking awesome. You sure you’re just a research assistant?”

Red bloomed across Howard’s face and he smiled at Leda in thanks. She saw Dr Morgan nodding and could even spy Astrid on the edges of her vision, head turned to Howard.

“It was nothing really. I-”

The plane lurched violently, cutting Howard off and slamming everyone to the side before it began to fall. Leda felt her legs rise and fall as the plane tipped down and then angled back up. She gasped, forcing her body backwards into her chair, stomach twisting. Thunder clapped loudly and Leda spied lightning in the distance in the window behind Howard’s head.

Her wide eyes looked frantically around the cabin, assessing and panicking at the same time. The Professor’s legs and arms were slack and a gash above his eye was slowly weeping blood. He must have hit his head. There wasn’t enough time to wonder on what. She just had to get him conscious.

“Dr Morgan?” She shook his arm roughly. “Dr Morgan!”

He remained motionless and her breath hitched in her chest. She heard shouts from the cockpit and the plane made a sudden spin, curtailing right before levelling out. Dr Morgan’s arm smacked against the wood of his armrest as it flopped about. The sound made Leda wince. He would feel that later. If there even _was_ a later.

Sarah mumbled something, beginning to rouse from her Valium slumber. Julian’s head hung forward but was moving sluggishly from side to side. He was awake but only just. Leda looked to Howard, who looked pale beneath his tan but was awake an unharmed. He was gripping his armrests so tightly that she worried he might snap a phalanx.

She called to him sharply. “Howard!”

He blinked slowly but managed to nod at her. Leda tried to smile past her rising panic. This was good. He was alright. Just in shock, most likely.

She opened her mouth to ask him if he was alright, but Astrid hissed: “Quiet!” from her seat. And Leda clammed up.

To her confusion, Astrid seemed completely fine. Not a hair out of place or panic on her face. Her calmness was maddening at a time where Leda, who had been trained for all manner of emergency situations, was herself starting to feel the beginnings of fear tighten her stomach and quicken her breath.  

In the near crash, the cockpit door had opened slightly, and Astrid leaned her body forward, straining to hear the voices of the pilots over the hum of the engines and the storm outside. If Leda strained, she could hear the frantic clicking of buttons and the swearing of the two pilots.

“…Down-…Emergen-…Code seven five zero-ze…land-…land-”

Astrid huffed and pulled out the brick phone. She clicked a button and held it to her ear, beginning to bark rapid French into the mouthpiece.  

Sarah slurred herself awake and it distracted Leda from watching Astrid grow irritated as she spoke.

Sarah blinked, mouth working around half-formed words. “Wha-s- is- wha-”

Leda no longer envied her unconcerned state. She was barely dealing with the, frankly, almost certainty of immediate death while sober, she couldn’t imagine dealing with it stuck in between reality and sleep by the effects of Valium.

Dr Morgan groaned beside her and part of her panic subsided as he blinked awake.

“Dr Morgan can you hear me?” He looked at her groggily and managed a nod.

“Good. Good.” She offered him a strained smile and tried to slow her breathing. “Can you tell me what your middle name is?”

She watched as he rolled his tongue in his mouth before replying. When he spoke she could see red on his teeth. He’d probably cut his gum when his head slammed into the backrest.

“It-it is-” Dr Morgan paused and blinked owlishly at her. Oh boy. That wasn’t good. “It is Eli-”

The oxygen masks suddenly descending cut him off and in her shock, Leda screamed.

Even though it was for a totally legitimate reason, she felt ridiculous a moment later. The plane had settled, it wasn’t shaking anymore. Even the thunder that had boomed above them seemed to quiet. Calm settled over the cabin and Leda’s breath steadied with it. She even managed an embarrassed chuckle at Julian who took time out of his concussion to roll his eyes at her overreaction.

“I’m sorry,” Leda warbled, unnerved. “I-sorry- I didn’t mean- I’m sorry. Is everyone ok?”

Any responses were swallowed by two things happening at once.

First, a flash of lightening lit up the window behind Julian’s head, momentarily bathing everyone in its silvery shine. Then the lights in the plane flickered off plunging everyone into darkness before the emergency floor lights kicked in.

“Everything is alright.” Julian stated firmly. The orangey emergency lights shadowed his serious face with a odd glow. “It’s probably just heavy turbulence. We’ll-”

 _Be alright_ , is what she assumed he had been going for. But again, like before, her comfort was cut short by the pilot whose voice crackled out from the plane’s speakers.

“ **This is your Captain speaking. All passengers are to exact the position. Brace for Impact.** “

A curse was heard though the ajar door as the plane seemed to jolt forward and down. The air began to feel thin. Leda’s body felt weightless and she scrambled to attach her oxygen mask onto her head. Her hands were shaking but she managed to get it secured. After, she turned to help Dr Morgan’s with his, but he had less control over his body and him trying to help her meant that their hands got tangled together with the mask’s strings. Sarah began to scream and the sound mingled with the engines whirr and the rush of air as their plane fell until it all blended into one horrible white noise.

She was going to die. That was for certain. But she was oddly calm. She wasn’t crying or screaming like Sarah or frantically shouting into a phone like Astrid. She didn’t even know what the best thing to think about was.

What was best for a last thought? Her parents? Her work? That guy in the coffee shop who she had been meaning to ask out? Everything was too important and not important enough to dwell on. Each problem required hours of thinking over, not seconds before she drowned. There just wasn’t enough time.

So as they fell Leda decided to think of nothing but the warm, calloused hand of the Professor, helping her attach his mask and the dazed blue of his eyes as he tried to say something to her, under his mask.

The Captain’s voice returned, and Leda’s mind settled peacefully, despite the chaos around her.

“ **Brace! Brace! Brace!** ” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!  
> I feel like every Author’s Note I write starts with ‘I’m sorry’ but I am sorry every time. If you haven’t already read my profile, I’m a MA student and I’ve had a lot of assignments due that make editing this hard, hence the long times between chapters. After September my assignments slow down till next year so I should be able to update more regularly from then.  
> As always, I can’t seem to help myself and this is another huge chapter that I’m not happy with at all. There are some tense problems but, like last time, I’m so tired of reading over it aha. As you can also probably tell as well, action is not a strong suit of mine so please bear with me aha 
> 
> You’ll be pleased that we’re finally getting to The Island as promised and soon we’ll be where we need to be. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this absolutely boring chapter lol and I’m sorry you had to wait so long to get it. Thank you so much for all the comments and kudos and so many hits! I’m constantly blown away every by how much you guys like this and I’m so happy we’re on this journey together!
> 
> Have a lovely week,  
> Aobh x


	6. Chapter Six

Leda woke up in patches.

Each time a new scene greeted her. First was the cream cabin floor, hidden by lapping dark water and the sound of feet splashing through it. Then actual water, stinging her eyes and flooding her mouth and the sharp smell of brine. Later, Astrid from an awkward angle, an orange sun backing her. Her face was red from exertion and her waterlogged hair hung in heavy sheets over her shoulders. She was dragging Leda by the arm across something wet and rough.

The final time she opened her eyes, consciousness seemed to stick. She was sitting up, propped against something lumpy that dug into her skin. Her clothes were wet and twisted awkwardly, weighing down on her. Her body ached in places she wasn’t sure it could ache and there was a pressure behind her eyes, like her eyeballs were going to roll out of her head and into her sopping lap. She worked her mouth, trying to pop an ear that was blocked, and one thought tumbled around her mushy head.

_What the fuck was going on?_

Hands wobbled into her line of sight, doubling and tripling before she squinted and focused and they steadied into two. She flinched away but they touched her cheek, ear, neck and a place on her head that made her hiss in pain. Howard’s face emerged from her peripheral vision and she realised it was his hands that cupped her neck and steadied her head.

“Leda!” Howard’s voice was strung out and high pitched, making her eye twitch at the sound. Ugh. Why was he so close? “Thank God you’re awake.”

His eyes were wide with relief and a cautious smile greeted her. She _wanted_ to say ‘get the hell off me’, but her mouth was all heavy and filled with teeth that felt too big and all she could really mumble was a string of nonsense.

“Wha- whe- Astrid-” The words tumbled out, sluggish and malformed. Her hands flexed on the ground and she looked down to watch her fingers sink into damp sand.

Sand? How was she sitting on sand? Where was the plane? When did they _land_?

Howard’s relief morphed into worry and he bit his bottom lip, hands falling away from her face.

“Are you-” He licked his lip and rubbed a hand over his chin. “Are you ok?”

She looked a little more closely at him. His dark hair was damp, sticking up in places as though he’d run his hands through it without care. There was a crusting gash on his forehead that didn’t look worrying. His skin was pale beneath his tan but two spots of red circled high on his cheeks giving him a lost, boyish look. Despite all that and the growing panic that was slowly morphing his face, he looked a hell of a lot better than Leda felt.

Howard gave her one last worried look before he turned his head and called over his shoulder.

“Professor!”

Her sight had been consumed by him but she followed his vision and saw the rest of the group in various stages of confusing action.

Astrid was standing to the side of the group, beside a pile of bags and a large boulder. Behind her, a line of trees extended to the edges of her vision in either direction. Leda could see her mouth moving but was too far to hear the rapid words. Whatever that phone was, Leda hoped it was waterproof.

To the left, Julian was comforting a crying Sarah and beside them two people she had never seen before were lying on two piles of what looked like jumpers and shirts.

They must have been the pilot and the co-pilot. They weren’t moving and no matter how hard she squinted she couldn’t make out the rise and fall of their chests. Jesus. God, were they _dead_? How were they dead? Why weren’t they in the plane anymore?

And where was her bag? She had- she had… Her mind tripped over the terms for the medical instruments she had packed, unable to settle on the correct words. She just- she had… _stuff_. She had packed _things_. She could- she had- she could _help_ -

The smell of burning caught her attention and she looked away from the maybe dead pilots to where the smell was emanating from. Black, acrid fumes were rising from a steaming hulk of warped metal that lay half on sand and in sea. Behind it the waves were a dark blue under the setting sun. She watched the metal sizzle every time the tide pushed against its still burning carcass.  Which was weird, of course. Because they were flying _above_ the sea. Not- not _in_ the- Why was it- where was the plane? Was _that_ the plane?

The pressure built in her head and pushed on her eyes. They were _definitely_ going to fall out.

She tried to speak again but couldn’t tear her eyes from the burning plane. "Ho-Howard where-”

“Dr Morgan!” He called, cutting her off.

His chest had begun to heave, she noted. If he wasn’t careful, he’d hyperventilate himself into a panic attack. She knew she was supposed to tell him to calm down or- or _something_ , but her eyeballs were literally about to fall out of her head so she should focus on that, right? Losing her eyes would be- well not _good_.

The last thing she remembered was being on the plane. Howard doing some weird mental gymnastics and then-

“Jesus- _fuck_." She whispered, forcing the words out. Black spots appeared on the edges of her vision. "We- Did we _crash_? The plane- crashed. We _cra_ -”

She sucked in a lungful of bitter air and Howard’s body began to dance in her flickering vision. God, she had to calm down. She had to breathe normally. She shouldn’t panic. That was rule number one. Everything was fine. Nothing would be good if she panicked. But knowing that they were _stranded_ -

_Were_ they stranded? How were they even- Where were they? How did they-

"Ms Gauling." Dr Morgan was suddenly in front of her, blocking her view of the burning plane and effectively cutting off the source of her existential panic. Probably a good thing. Better that she didn't have visual representation of their utterly abysmal situation.

Howard looked relieved as Dr Morgan took over. He gave Leda a tight smile before he rose and walked back to the group, leaving her alone with the Professor.

“How do you feel?” Dr Morgan asked.

“How do I-” Leda hiccupped, hands rhythmically clutching and unclutching sand. “How do I _feel_? What- where are we?”

Dr Morgan’s face was strangely devoid of panic and he even managed an encouraging smile.

He produced a cup from somewhere and held it up to her lips. “Perhaps it’s best if you have some water first.”

“No.” Leda shook her head, the black spots in her vision bleeding away. She found it a bit easier to talk now and ran her dry tongue over her salty lips. Salt from the sea. Because they crashed into the _sea_.  “I don’t want- water. I want- where _are_ we?”

 “You’ll feel better.” He said, refusing to answer.

Leda scowled and snatched the cup from his hand, flinging sand from her fingers over them both.

He had to re-fill the cup three times from a cannister she hadn’t noticed before she felt anywhere close to normal.

“Thanks.” She muttered when she was done, handing the empty cup back to him with a shaking hand.

“Ms Gauling-”

“No.” She broke him off, holding up a sand covered hand. “No more stalling. Where the hell are we, Dr Morgan?"

His hair had dried in places and curled haphazardly against the strands that were still wet. She watched his smile waver at the edges. "The plane ran into difficulties. The pilots were great they managed to-"

"Where _are_ we Dr Morgan?" Leda interrupted again, voice hard.

"Well.” The cup dangled limply from his lax fingers, and a strange, excited light creeped into the corner of his eyes. "You came with me to prove your father was right."

She frowned, eyes swivelling from him, to the plane, to Julian and Sarah and then to Astrid and the wall of trees that swayed gently in a hot breeze behind her.

“He was right, Leda.” He said, pulling her gaze back to his. Passion thickened his voice and he gathered her hands between his own, squeezing them tightly. “He was **right**!”

Emotion bubbled in her chest. Fear, panic, excitement, relief; all warring with one another and making her head spin.  

"This- this is _the_ island?” She managed to choke out.  

"Yes, Ms Gauling.” His smile stretched into a slightly manic grin. “This is most definitely The Island.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> This is only a small update. This chapter and the next were originally one but it was becoming too long and tedious, so I've broken it up! Sorry for that. Expect the next chapter within the week as its already written and just needs editing. For once I _am_ happy with this aha I think I like my writing better when it's brief and short like this. When it gets much longer, I feel like I lose everything. Thank you so much for all the hits, the comments and the kudos! I'm so happy to see you all liking this story so much! Your continued support helps me to keep writing and I thank you all for being so supportive. Have a lovely week!
> 
> -Aobh (: x


	7. Chapter 7

“We have to set his leg.” Leda said, rolling a pair of green latex gloves onto her hands.

All the phones apart from Astrid’s were water damaged or lost in the plane wreckage, but she guessed an hour or so had passed since she woke up. The sun had finally set below the horizon, leaving streaks of fading orange across the darkening sky. Julian and Howard had built a fire from scavenged driftwood and she found herself unconsciously leaning towards it as night settled.

The shock was gone too and while she couldn’t fully rule out what was most likely a mild concussion, there wasn’t really time to focus on herself when the Pilot’s - _Paul’s_ \- tibia was bent in two and the tip of one half had breached the skin of his shin. Compounds were always trickier than they had any right to be and that was in a _hospital_. Out here on the edge of what was known reality, a compound fracture was going to be a real son of a bitch.

“ _We_?” Julian interrupted her thoughts. His eyebrows shot up, half hidden beneath his copper hair. It had dried fluffy on his head and it made him look younger. “Who said anything about ‘we’? _You’re_ the Doctor, Newbs.”

Leda rolled her eyes and cracked her knuckles. Paul’s tibia had _mostly_ broken cleanly but without an x-ray it was impossible to know more. Setting a bone was never pretty but as annoying as a compound was, she couldn’t shake the guilty thankfulness she felt at such a injury. Stabilizing, tending and setting a compound fracture was a great distraction from the looming abyss of worry that hung over her head. 

She was on the Island. _The_ island. The place her dad said existed but none of the courts had ever found. Well. _Stranded_ on the Island if she was going to be specific about it.

God. How were they going to get home? Her dad didn’t even know where she was, and her phone was well past dead. She was never going to get the chance to tell him that she was sorry, and he was _right_.

“As soon as I set that leg, he’s gonna shoot up and start swinging.” She said, exasperated.

If they _were_ stuck forever on a disappearing island, she was going to have to reject her Hippocratic Oath and commit murder by strangulation if Julian spent the next sixty years being a gigantic dick.

She gestured to the Pilot’s arms. “I need you and Howard to hold him down. It’s either that or he loses the leg and we all get black eyes.”

“I’m sure he’d be fine losing a leg.” Julian muttered, but he got up anyway and rubbed his sandy hands on his thighs. He clapped Howard on the shoulder as he passed and jerked his head to where Leda knelt by Paul’s legs. “With the pay-out he’s about to get from big pharma Aether, he could afford _two_ new robotic legs.”

“Jules!” Sarah squeaked from her seat next to the co-pilot, Louise Hanquin. She was conscious, if still a little delirious. The Botanist was helping her sip from a bottle of water, using her lap as a pillow for Louise’s head.

“What?” Julian snorted, kneeling by Paul’s head. Howard sat on Leda's right and swallowed deeply. He tried to hide the shake in his hands by clasping them together but she still saw the tremble in his fingers. “Dude’s about to have so much money he won’t know what to do with it. May as well lose two legs and set your grandchildren’s grandchildren up for eternity. In for a penny in for a pound, I always say.”

“You ok?” Leda ignored Julian, bumping Howard’s shoulder with her own. “You look a little green. It’s ok if you can’t do it. I can ask Astrid or Sarah if you-”

“No!” he interrupted, but not with any venom and Leda admired the determination that settled over his features. “I- I can do it. I’m just…”

“Bit different from watching it on _Casualty_ , right?”

Howard shot her a grateful look and with a deep breath, began to roll his damp sleeves up to his elbows. “Yes. That.”

Julian wiped his hands with a disinfectant wipe from her kit and tossed a packet to Howard which he scrambled to catch.

“If you’re too green I can do it myself, Nerd.” Julian quipped and set his large hands on Paul’s slack shoulders. “Blood doesn’t bother me in the _slightest_.”

 * 

It surprised absolutely no one that Julian was the first to puke. Well. No one apart from Howard probably, who was straddling the line between smugness and concern.

As soon as Leda had snapped the bone back into place, Paul had jerked awake with a yell. Howard clamped down on his ankles and Julian pushed against his heaving shoulders, but she couldn’t have anticipated the spray of blood from the fracture arching high and over Paul’s body. It splattered across Julian’s shocked face and Leda grimaced as a bit dribbled into his open mouth. She wasn’t the least surprised when the man who had loudly proclaimed that ‘blood didn’t bother him in the slightest’, went as green as her med pack and promptly projectile vomited into a nearby bush.

That had been ten minutes ago now. Julian had crawled back to his make-shift bed of someone’s slightly damp jacket and was laying on his side. Howard was graciously pressing a cold flannel to Julian’s forehead while trading amused grins with Leda who was busy bandaging the Paul’s leg and trying not to think about the fact she was stranded on an island with a bunch of strangers and far, _far_ out of her depth. She was so busy thinking about not thinking that she only realised Astrid had returned to the group when she clapped her hands together, startling everyone. 

"The sub will be here in two days." She stated, standing beside Dr Morgan who was fiddling with a weird antennae thing. Her brick phone was nowhere in sight but it seemed all that rapid talking worked. Help was coming. Leda’s fingers twitched as she secured the last of the bandages, smiling in apology to a wincing Paul as she tightened the knot.

"Sub?" Leda asked as Sarah handed her two planks of driftwood. Leda shook her head and motioned for Sarah to hold them in place against Paul’s leg as she opened a new bandage roll.  “As in sub _marine_?”

Astrid blinked. "Oui. Of course.”

Leda scoffed under her breath. Trust the heir to the secret society to not only know of _a_ submarine but have enough money and resources to get one to rescue them. She even said it like Leda had just asked her if water was wet. One percenters were a _riot_.

“The skies are too volatile.” Astrid continued, bending down to straighten one of the bent antennae’s Dr Morgan was fiddling with. “They will come by sea."

Leda looked to the still smouldering wreckage of their plane. Yeah. Volatile was one way to put it. No wonder the Frenchwoman had looked so calm during everything. Leda guessed that she could fall out of the international space station and be fine with it because a hired spaceship would come pick her up.

Maybe it was the absurdity of the situation, or maybe it was the almost foot she took to the chin as Paul jerked as she tied the splint together with the new bandage roll, but Leda couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of her voice when she spoke.

“Yeah. _Sure_. Submarine. Like that’s a totally normal thing to request. Did you order caviar as well?”

Astrid’s nostrils flared but she offered no reply.

Logically, Leda knew it wasn’t her fault that the plane had crashed. Whatever (and she hated to even think it) _thing_ that zapped them out of the sky was also probably the reason why the island, for all intents and purposes, didn’t ‘exist’. It was just _easier_ to blame the physical embodiment of a mysterious secret society than it was to drive herself crazy wishing her dad had just picked up the goddamn phone. Or worse, blame herself for thinking she could just go on an adventure and not have it completely screw up.

Julian’s groan tore through the silence Leda’s jab had left.

“Two days?” he moaned, batting Howard’s hand from his forehead. He flopped onto his back and in the orange firelight, his red hair glowed unnaturally. “What are we gonna eat for two _days_?”

* 

Energy bars. That’s what they were going to eat. Energy bars, little packets of sour cream and chive pretzels, fifteen bottles of water and a bottle of whiskey Dr Morgan had somehow saved from the fiery inferno of their plane. Go figures the old man would save the whiskey first.

“What are you doing with that cannister?” Sarah tiredly mumbled to Howard as they all sat around the campfire, finally dry and well into the night.

No one had any blown pupils and apart from Paul, who was in a lot of pain but handling it well, no one was having trouble stringing two sentences together. Despite no obvious signs of concussion, Leda had advised that they all stay up till sunrise, just to make sure. Light dozing would be ok, she’d feel better if they just forewent sleep for a few hours. The advice had been taken with scowls but so far, so good. The twilight hours had even inspired some creativity, if Howard’s constant tinkering with a gas cannister salvaged from the plane wreckage was anything to go by.

“Yeah. What _are_ you doing, nerd?” Julian quipped. He was warming his hands next to the fire and had recovered from barfing up everything in his stomach. “We saw you filling it up with sea water. You’re not going all _Castaway_ on us are you?”

“I’m making a desalination instrument.” Howard said absently, attaching a tube he’d found from somewhere onto the cannister’s empty nozzle.

“A what?” Leda asked, her interest wiping some of the exhaustion from around her eyes.

“It is a device to purify sea water.” Dr Morgan answered for Howard. He didn’t even look up from the antennae he was still fiddling with and Leda rolled her eyes. An action she was beginning to realise was second nature around that group. He tutted as one of the wires bent in the wrong direction and then, with an air of normalcy asked: “Will you bury it or burn it?”

Leda’s eyebrows shot up. “Will he _what_?!”

Howard shrugged, twisting the rubber tubing to tighten it. “Burn it. It’ll be faster.”

He placed a piece of domed metal from the plane’s hull on the floor by the fire and lay the end of the rubber tube in its centre. And then, acknowledgement of how weird the conversation had gotten or any pre-warning, he threw the cannister onto the fire.

The bonfire sparked and sizzled and Leda jumped to her feet. Jesus Christ. Maybe Howard really had gone all _Castaway_. Julian leapt up two seconds later, eyes wild and awake.

“What the hell, nerd?” He yelled, patting his thighs to douse any embers that had flown onto him. “You’ve gone all Lord of the Flies on us!”

“Calm down.” Dr Morgan said with a sigh, frowning down at his antennae. “The fire will boil the saltwater inside. The tube will gather the condensation and deposit it into the bowl. Thus-”

“We get fresh drinking water.” Julian finished. The anger in his face bled away to appreciation and he sat again with a huff. “Pretty cool, nerd. Although a warning would have been nice. Kinda wish you _did_ go all _Lord of the Flies_ on us, though. Woulda made for a good story.”

“Don’t worry.” Howard said drily, watching the cannister heat up. “There’s still time to turn into a cannibal and eat you.”

Leda didn’t stick around to hear Julian’s indignant reply. Her feet were moving before she even had a direction and only stopped when she was close to the line of trees that bordered the beach.

Her breath stuttered in her chest and she held a shaking hand to her breast. Something about the jabbing and jibing and the burning cannister and de-sa-li-nation had kicked her panic into hyperdrive. How could they just sit there and be so _normal_? They were miles from home and the only thing they had to look forward to was some mythical sub from some world dominating secret society heiress. She was never going to see her dad again. Her mum was dead, and _she_ was going to die on that dumb island with Julian being a prick _and why couldn’t dad have just picked up the fucking pho_ -

“Are you alright?” Astrid’s deep voice cut through her frantic thoughts.

“I uh-” Leda cleared her throat and scratched nervously at her wrist while she thought up a lie. “Needed to pee. Just trying to figure out which tree looked the least threatening.”

Astrid hummed. Leda looked at her out of the corner of her eye. Her hair had dried wild, but it framed her face beautifully and in the dark, her brows hung even lower over her eyes and set her face into shadow. She was carrying two backpacks. One of which looked suspiciously like Leda’s.

“Come then.” Astrid said and Leda fought against the natural response to just obey the Amazonian. “I will go with you.”

“Oh…” Leda looked back to the camp and cleared her throat. “No, it’s fine. I can- you know. I can go by myself. Big girl and all.”

She withered under Astrid’s answering stare.

"What about the others?" She asked lamely, grasping at straws. She had no desire to be alone with Astrid anymore than she desired to go sit back with the group and she was running out of ways to politely decline.

"You’ll be quick.” Astrid shoved Leda's backpack into her limp hands. “I could use the break as well. Come.”

Leda sighed and slipped the bag on. It felt way heavier than it had in Bermuda and she adjusted the straps accordingly. Bermuda seemed so far away now; a lifetime could have passed when in reality it had only been ten hours or so.

Astrid handed her a flashlight when they got to the treeline and Leda chanced one last look at the group. The others were talking, Sarah's white teeth catching the bonfire as she laughed. Dr Morgan however, had finally looked away from his antennae thing and was staring right at her. She smiled a little, but he didn’t return the gesture and his blank look left a weird taste in her mouth.

Astrid’s flashlight blinked past her, and Leda followed, waiting until she had passed the first few trees before flicking hers on too.

A strange silence settled over them as they ventured into the forest, like a buzzing just below the skin that crawled into her ears and settled uncomfortably. She shook her head as if to expel the bizarre sensation, but it stuck fast.

Astrid stopped suddenly and pointed her flashlight’s beam to the base of a thin, grey tree. “Here.”

“Oh.” Leda trailed to a halt. She had completely forgotten her lie about needing to pee; the weirdness of the forest had distracted her. She cast her eyes up and around quickly, trying to find a source for what was making her feel so odd but was only greeted by empty forest. Now that she thought about it, there didn’t seem to be _anything_ around them. No wildlife or insects. Nothing but trees. “I-”

“Don’t need to go?” Astrid snorted and as quickly as she had stopped began to walk again, flashlight swinging from side to side. “I assumed.”

Leda stalled, not wanting to go further into unknown territory with _Astrid_ of all people but also not wanting to traipse back through the wood alone. It wasn’t like she was particularly close with the woman after butting heads with her for the better part of twelve hours but she didn’t want to be alone in the forest that was giving her the worst hibbie jibbie’s she’d had since she was seven and had watched _The Exorcist_ against her parents express permission.

After a moment she followed after Astrid with a groan, rucksack bouncing against her sweaty back. Guess she was going with door number one: probable death in a creepy forest. But at least she wouldn’t be _alone_ as the inevitable big bad whatever ate her eyeballs. This is what she got for wanting to be brave and help her dad. She should have just stayed home. The only thing that could help her dad was money. Money for his psychiatric treatment and for the vending machine so he could get those chocolate bars he liked.

She rubbed at her ear as they walked silently, the odd sensation swelling faster under her skin. Her body felt foreign, like something else was burrowing inside.

She broke the silence just as her skin began to crawl. “Does this forest seem a little…”

“Weird?” Astrid grunted and Leda saw her head nod in the beam of her flashlight. “Oui.”

Ugh. Just like that. Like it was totally normal that they were in a forest with no wildlife and a weird pressure that was making her feel like she wanted to tear her skin off.

It was quiet again for a while and Leda scrambled to find something- _anything-_ to say just to distract herself from feeling so... _weird_.

"So...” she hedged, watching the back of Astrid's head. “You're related to the guy who founded The Aether Group.”

Astrid paused to hold up a low hanging branch for her to duck under. She hummed, waiting until they were beside each other before walking again. "Yes. Distantly."

"That must be-"

"A burden." Astrid cut her off, looking down at Leda past her strong nose. She hadn’t been expecting her to be so honest about it. Leda was new to the whole ‘leave your job and go on an adventure thing’ but she was pretty sure that in all the movies, the secret society was _always_ the bad guy. So far, Astrid had just seemed a little…cold. So this little slice of truth was welcome. Sort of. She wasn’t sure she was in a hurry to jump headfirst into ‘friendship’ with a woman she wasn’t sure was telling her the whole truth about everything.

"Oh." Leda muttered. A sheen of sweat had formed across her forehead. It pricked the roots of her hair and she bemoaned the loss of a shower. She probably didn’t smell too hot right then. "I know all about burdens."

Astrid hummed again. "Yes. With your father. Richard."

There it was again. The familiarity with which she said her dad’s name. _Did_ they know each other? And if so, how the hell? Leda hadn’t been around him a lot since having him committed but she sure as shit would have noticed the six foot three Amazon at The Eyrie had she been there.

She let out a short titter despite the dread that always formed when someone brought up her dad coiling in her empty stomach. Or maybe she was just hungry.

"...It must have been a lot." Astrid hedged, leaves and twigs crunching under her heavy boots.

Leda scoffed. "Not any more so than growing up knowing you were going to lead a three-hundred-year-old secret society that’s probably filled with raging men with small egos."

She expected another one and Astrid’s less than warm stares, but the Frenchwoman surprised her by laughing instead. It was a rough sound; masculine and hard but in the weirdness of her situation Leda found herself offering a snort of camaraderie.

The tension between them thawed by a millimetre as Astrid threw her a wild grin.

"Oui. Probably just as hard as that. I-"

She stopped abruptly and her hand flew to her waist. The sound of the gun being cocked echoed loudly in the quiet of the forest and it made Leda gulp and the hairs on her arms stand on end. 

Up ahead where the trees thinned, a whitish glow seeped between their trunks. It was like something out of the _X-Files_ and replaced her false sense of ease with sticky dread.

Astrid tossed something small over her shoulder and Leda fumbled the catch with limp fingers. It slipped out of her grasp and when she picked it up, she realised it was a taser. Where the hell had she been hiding a _taser_?

Astrid crept towards the treeline; gun held high. "Stay behind and close to me."

“What!” Leda cried, back hunching against some unseen threat. “What are you _doing_?”

Astrid jerked her free hand behind her back as if to hush her and continued to advance. 

“Wait!” She hissed but Astrid ignored her and slipped past the trees into the glowing unknown. The light gobbled the shadow of her profile and left Leda feeling far more alone than she had in years.

She huffed and jimmied on the spot and the taser hung heavy in her grip. It was either stay out there by herself and let the forest send her mad or follow Astrid, and she couldn’t believe she was about to think this as a medical professional, _into the light_.

She chose the latter, of course. In for a penny, in for a pound.

"Oh my-

"God." Astrid finished as Leda broke through the trees and stumbled to a stop beside her.

Before them was a large, dark lake. Scattered on the water's surface and on the wet ground surrounding were hand-sized gold and silver leaves. They emitted a faint light and sluggishly, Leda realised that that’s where the glow had been coming from. 

She stooped to pick up a handful of leaves that had floated onto the wet soil. They were warm to the touch and lit her fingers with their white glow.

Leda held up the leaves. "You ever seen a plant like this?"

Astrid re-holstered her gun before shaking her head stiffly. “No.”

Distracted by everything around her, Leda stuffed the leaves she was holding into her pocket along with the taser and walked to the water's edge. The surface rippled occasionally, even though she couldn’t see or hear any flowing source. Perhaps there were fish in the murk although, with how silent the island was, Leda doubted anything lived in the water except fauna.

A tugging sensation began in her stomach, curling around until it wound itself tight and ebbed with each ripple of the water. She gritted her teeth against it. There was nothing to be alarmed about. It was probably just nerves.

"Be careful." Astrid said and Leda jumped, startled. Her foot slipped into the water and she groaned. Wet boots and socks were a gross combination and the leading cause of trench foot. Which, if she took into consideration her shitty luck so far, she was most likely going to contract.

Leda watched the ripples her foot created disturb the surface. "Its warm." She said.

Maddeningly, each ebb of water timed itself to the pull in her stomach that she was _trying_ to ignore.

Astrid jaw clicked before she spoke. "It may be an underground volcano. Do not go any further."

Leda rolled her eyes and quickly glanced back. “You know, it may be hard to imagine, but I’m not actually a child.”

Astrid huffed and stooped to examine a weird green plant with small white flowers. “Oh, I know, Ms Gauling.”

“It’s _Ackerman_.” Leda griped, resisting a new urge that washed over her. It was like fight or flight on steroids. She got the insane urge to step further into the lake. To keep walking to- to _something_.

“Is it?” Astrid’s voice was coy. She broke off a stem, brought the cluster to her nose and breathed deeply. “It smells sweet.”

Leda’s thoughts jumbled in her head, the pulling was growing stronger and if she was being honest, it didn’t feel a whole lot like nerves. It felt like there was rope inside her attached to something and that something was pulling. **Hard**. Leda didn’t want to go anywhere but _home_ but it was beginning to feel like she didn’t have much choice.

"Stop!" Astrid’s cry sounded panicked and Leda felt a bit guilty that her first thought was that she was a bit happy that at last _something_ had ruffled her. That smugness lasted exactly two point five seconds, however, because as she turned back, she saw how far she had walked into the lake and blanched. The water pushed at her thighs, now, seemingly growing higher ever breath she took. What the hell?

"Leda come back _now_." There was a wobble in Astrid’s throat and again, Leda felt a childish sense of _a-ha!_ at ruffling the un-ruffable. Astrid pulled out her gun again and Leda rolled her eyes.

“Stop being so dramatic.” Leda said, trying for an air of nonchalance but worry pulled at corners of her mouth. How had she gotten so far away? “Put it away, I’m coming back.”

She tried to step towards Astrid, but her foot went backwards instead and the water soaked the shirt at her stomach.

"I said come _back_ not go further!" Astrid yelled; gun steady. Leda got the irrational fear that she was going to _shoot_ her and her panic hitched.

"I’m trying.” Leda grunted, taking a step back to shore. “Just shut up a second! I need- I need to _think_ -"

Instead of moving back towards the bank, her foot slid back again, further into the lake and she gasped. The water was now just below her breasts. In a panic she swung her arms in an arc under the surface to force herself forward towards Astrid but something tugged her back, and her foot slipped again. There must have been a drop in the floor because when she tried to stand her feet treaded water.

"Astrid!" Leda shouted, around water that slipped up above her hair and worked into her mouth.

The lake churned around her and she spun her arms again, trying to keep her head above water. The weight of her bag kept pushing her down though, and she fought against her sagging clothes.

“Stay there, Leda!” Astrid yelled but made no attempt to come any further or touch the water. The satellite phone was at her ear again and she looked very small on the bank.  "Just don’t _move_!"

Leda wanted to yell back that she was _trying_ for Gods sake but the sharp pull in her belly made the words stall. One minute she was staring at Astrid and the next she had a mouthful of water and was being dragged down. Air bubbled up around her and stung her eyes. All around was black, inky depths.

She could only have been under for seconds, but it felt like hours before her instincts took over rand she began to kick for the surface. It took countless tries but within the blink of an eye she shot upwards, breaking the waterline with a gasp of air. The pulling in her stomach ebbed and left her feeling empty, like she hadn’t eaten in days and she grimaced, hacking water until her throat felt scorched. Light stung her eyes as she wiped the water away from them.  

“Jesus- Astrid- g-get some rope or-" But she wasn’t there anymore and that wasn’t the only thing that was all fucking _wrong_.

For one, it was daytime now and the sunlight made black spots form and dance around her stunned eyes. Second, the lake was also now inexplicably a river that extended far to the left and right of her peripheral vision. The water was colder, too and cramped her fingers.

So. Astrid being missing was a ~~total~~ major inconvenience (or rather, absolute devastation) but it was ok. She could deal with it. She’d just- find something or someone. Or do- _something_. She could handle it. She could even handle the whole lake to river thing if she suspended her disbelief for another thousand years.

But the _real_ nail in the coffin of her false positivity in the face of total _fuck_ was the line of people standing in the Frenchwoman’s place, all in elaborate armour with gleaming swords and wooden bows. She couldn’t see their faces in her blurry vision, but she was ninety-nine-percent sure that they were as shocked to see her as she was to see them.

"Drego!" One of them shouted. Their loose black hair flew about their face as they gestured down.

Down? They wanted her to go back down into the river? Were they mad? How had they even gotten there? Had they been on the island and not seen the plane crash and _what the fuck was going_ -

Something growled behind her and she spun, booted feet kicking at the water. A mottled green skinned... _thing_ was standing on the other riverbank. A rusty looking sword raised above its...head? Was it a head? It didn’t look like any head she'd ever seen before. Around it were other deformed creatures holding every type of hammer, knife and sword Leda could think of. They weren’t wearing armour and she could just about make out the sneers and grins and rotting yellow teeth behind.

A frantic call came again from behind as Leda treaded water, wide eyed and stunned. "Drego! **_Drego_**!"

And then all hell broke loose. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As far as I could make out, Drego is the Sindarin word for flee but I'm not a linguist. I have no idea if it's right, but it doesn't bother me in this edit. This is a huge chapter and again, editing it felt like pulling teeth. Mentally, I can't keep churning out 5000-word chapters lol One of things I was focusing on in my University workshops was using less words to get the same points across. To varying degrees of success that has worked with this story but it's something I need to work on.
> 
> But anyway! This is the end of Phase One and we're in Middle Earth at last! I'm glad it's taken this long to get here and I hope I haven't bored you all with the build up lol
> 
> Thank you so much for the kudos, comments and hits and your lovely support! I do reply to all reviews because I appreciate them so much. I tend to reply just before I post a new chapter. It's like a checklist routine aha I just wanted to write something light-hearted and fun and I'm glad we're all on this Indiana Jones adventure together. Have a great few weeks till next time we meet!
> 
> Novaer,
> 
> Aobh x (:


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains mild depictions of violence and gore. Please read with caution if you know that you are sensitive to these descriptions.

 

Leda had never been into the whole ‘ _fantasy roleplaying_ ’ thing. 

As a black woman, pretending to be someone in the Middle Ages (who would most likely have been a second-class citizen due to the colour of their skin) had never appealed to her. Her life was already one big pantomime anyway so why complicate things with prop swords and Olde English?  

LARPing, Dungeons and Dragons, even fantasy drama’s on T.V. All of it was so foreign to her. What was the point of fantasising about hero’s with flowing hair and girls stuck in towers with dragons when she’d open her eyes and be right back to the tragic crap that was her life?  

Her whole schtick was ‘logical reality’. It’s why she went into Medicine and why she could never believe her dad. It just wasn’t how her mind worked. She had too many real-life problems to justify escaping to dragon worlds and witch hovels.  

Portals to other worlds just _didn’t exist_.

But even as a very  _real_  non-roleplaying arrow whizzed past her head and burned away every preconceived notion she had of reality and its limitations, she struggled to really grasp the fact that maybe her dad wasn’t actually crazy. Maybe he had been right this entire time. Maybe she was now stuck in another world getting shot at by arrows.

And _maybe_ that meant she was royally screwed.

The greenish grey  _monster_  that shot at her sneered as the arrow missed and sliced into the murky water by her shoulder.  

It notched another and Leda’s heart caught in her throat as it closed one black eye and steadied the bow to aim. She ducked back below the waterline just as it pulled the string taut. Mouth pinched, she spun around and kicked towards the other bank as water gurgled into her ear canals.  

She had just about enough energy to keep her swimming until her knees dragged against pebbles and her flapping hands cut themselves on shoreline debris. She winced at the small abrasions but there wasn’t any time to assess the damage _or_ acknowledge that she was (maybe) in a new world because as soon as she was on dry land she was being pushed and corralled away from the waters edge.

People in a mix of bronze and silver armour parted and closed ranks as multiple pairs of hands kept her moving until she was at the back of their little armada.

Other than pushing her away, they barely paid her any spare looks. Which was weird, of course. Because if someone popped out of the Serpentine while she was in Hyde Park and crawled onto the grass, she would definitely at least _look_ to see if they were an alien.

Which was _also_ insane. Aliens didn’t exist. And neither did The Island, or portals to other worlds. But here she was, half-drowned and being shot at by arrows. Maybe aliens _did_ exist.

_God Leda_ , she thought, _you get sucked through one maybe-portal and now you believe in aliens_.

More arrows whizzed past her head and the sound of them slicing through the air made her duck madly. One just missed her shoulder and clattered uselessly beside her. The wood splintered in the middle from the force and the sight of it stopped her retreat.

It was dumb to halt but it was like she was on autopilot. Some rational part of her brain knew she was most likely in shock, but one minute she was on her hands and knees and the next her arms were over her head and she was curled into the foetal position. In her little cocoon it was almost enough false security that for a split second, she was able to only focus on the soft breeze chilling her wet back and the drumming of her own heart in her ear.

Ok.

_Ok_.

This was ok. This was _fine_. She could handle this. If it just- you know, stayed like this, then she’d be ok. She’d jump back into the river that was also a lake and Astrid would laugh and say she’d just hit her head and everything was a weird dream and dad was still crazy and mum was still dead and everything would be _fine_ because there’s no way she was on another world because that would mean that dad wasn’t crazy and mum wasn’t dead but _shewasabouttobedeadbecause_ -

A cold hand slapped onto her back, slicing through her rising panic. She screamed and threw herself forward, scrambling to her knees and spun to face her fate. She imagined the sneer of the monster that had shot an  _arrow_ at her, but instead found one of the people in armour, bent at the waist. 

The sun caught their bronze breastplate and she squinted as the refracted light stung the backs of her eyes. Even bending down they towered over her, impossibly large. Their body was covered in intricate yellow-bronze armour and beneath, what looked like black cloth that, when she squinted, was actually small black rings woven together. Chainmail, was it called? Their helmet was cut into a weird heart shape over their face, the peak of which extended down their long nose. Grey eyes shone from beneath fair eyebrows and tracked her every move. Their nose was flared and, looking closer, Leda realised it was a guy. At least she thought it was. She’d never actually seen a guy that was as… _big_ as him before. Which was a dumb thing to think when she was clearly about to die if the twin swords at his waist were any indication of just how fucked she was.

He pointed behind her and made a shooing motion with his hand. “Drego.”

The sound of metal grinding together pulled her attention past his shoulder to the battle she was doing her best to ignore. The green monsters and the armoured people were clashing in the water now, but each side was moving too quickly for her to focus on. 

He tutted at her lack of focus and moved to block her vision of the fight. Her eyes swam before adjusting and focusing to his new position. Had he gotten closer or was he always that big? 

He dropped to a crouch and raised a hand to push at her frozen shoulder. “Drego.”   
   
Leda’s desperate words warbled uncomfortably in her throat and were almost lost amongst the growing sounds of clashing swords. "I don’t understand what  _Drego_  means!"  

Two full lips puckered into a scowl and a sound came from behind his helmet that sounded suspiciously like a groan. He pushed at her shoulder again, even as she repeated her sentence.

He was pushing her away from the fight but back to where the trees grew dense. It was a tossup between allowing him to push her into the dark where he would probably murder her and staying where she was where she would also probably be murdered.  

And how the _hell_ was she even supposed to know if he was a ‘good guy’? Maybe those deformed things were like freedom fighters or something. Trying to fight off the oppressive Lords of Mars or whatever Hell planet she had landed on. That was always the plot of those dumb sci-fi films she hated. 

Maybe they- Wait.

Jesus Christ. Good-guys, bad-guys? Monsters and liberation? This kind of shit was the stuff of her own personal nightmares. And here she was, wondering if this behemoth of a man was a _Lord of Mars_.

He huffed at her lack of attention and pushed her hard. Her body slid back an inch from the force and she panicked. “Wait!  _W-wait_!”  

She tried to pull away, but he’d had enough of her stalling and his fingers curled around her shoulder, rough glove digging into the space between flesh and bone painfully.  

“Man cerig?  _Drego_.” He hissed, full lips pulling into a frown.

She pushed back against his hand, trying to shove him off. “Just- _Wait_!”

He shook his head and shoved her again. “Daro! Odúlen gi nathad!”  

They pushed against one another, neither of them moving until she grew tired and he seized the opportunity. He awkwardly frog marched her backwards, gnashing his teeth together when she refused to turn and crawl. She didn’t want to turn her back on him in case he stuck a knife in it and more importantly, she didn’t want to lose sight of her only way home.

He kept pushing until the trees grew closer around them and her view of the lake was part obscured. Her back hit the base of a tree and she stopped.

Unsatisfied with how far she had come he clicked his tongue and tried to get her to move around it but her body had already sagged and she moaned and batted at his arm until he let go of her shoulder.

She closed her eyes as a cough rattled through her chest. Her shoulders heaved and salty spittle dribbled pathetically from the corner of her mouth.

He waited for her eyes to open before he barked another order.

"Dartha!" He pointed to the spot she was crumpled at. When she didn’t respond right away his fingers pinched her chin and tilted her head until their eyes met.  “ **Dartha**.”  

She nodded weakly. Her chest felt tight and she winced, breathing deeply through her mouth three times to steady herself. 

Clearly nodding wasn’t enough because he jiggled her chin and repeated the command until her ears rang with it. What was with this guy and his grabby hands?

“Ok- ok. Jes-” She slapped at his hand. “Dartha. I’ll do whatever the hell Dartha is if you let _go_.”  

He probably hadn’t understood a word she said but he nodded stiffly and released her chin, satisfied with her compliance. His grey eyes roamed her face and beneath the tense pull at his eyes she saw what might have been concern. He lingered for a moment making her feel uncomfortable under his stare and then he stood to his full, dizzying height.

“Dartha.” He said softly and then he was gone, bounding back to the line of other armoured people, melting between their bodies until he was lost in a sea of silver and bronze.  

She guessed Dartha meant ‘stay put woman whom a portal spat out’ but despite the shake in her arms she knew it would be dumb to stay put. She should go now, find somewhere to hide and then leg it back to her ticket home when the fighting was over.  

Her legs buckled three times before she could stand and she winced as something jabbed into her thigh, momentarily distracting her. She reached a shaking hand into her trouser pocket. Her fingers grasped the smooth plastic of the taser Astrid had given her and behind it, the cool stems of the leaves she had found on the Island.  

Holy _shit_. She forgot she had it. Hope bloomed in her chest. Thank God for tall, morally ambiguous Frenchwomen who liked hand-held firearms.

As a Doctor, Leda had thoughts about weapons, even supposedly ‘non-lethal’ ones like tasers, but she had never been happier in her life than right then to be carrying an illegal weapon on her person. She hoped it wasn’t damaged from all the water. Were tasers waterproof?

She tugged at the it, but it was wedged in side-ways and got stuck on the too-small zipper. The sounds of fighting grew louder and drew her eyes as she tried to free the stupid hunk of plastic.

Watching them all fight was like something from a movie.

The two sides duck and spun and sliced around one another like they were all performing some kind of elaborate dance. Each drop of blood spilled made her stomach churn. Warm saliva filled her throat as she watched the armoured people hack at the never-ending stream of green-skinned monsters. They held the line for as long as they could, but even Leda, who knew nothing of war, knew that they didn’t have nearly enough numbers. 

The monsters would be through soon, and then there was nothing between her and an arrow to the head.  

A monster clipped the shoulder of someone in silver armour. They weren’t wearing a helmet and as they turned, the sun revealed another male. From her limited view she could just about make out his stern face and blonde hair braided into two French plaits. As he spun and sliced, his hair seemed to shine like gold under the sun. Something hit him on the back of his head and she watched his face scrunch in disgust. He turned, too quickly for her eyes to track and when her vision settled he had embedded a large sword through the skull of a monster.

Leda didn’t need sound to hear the crunch of bone as the blonde kicked its dead chest away. Its body fell back in slow motion, blood sprouting from the gooey middle of its split head.

Jesus.

Jesus, what the _fuck_?

More saliva gathered in her mouth and she blinked against a wave of nausea at the hellish sight. What the hell was that? Her eyes burned. What the hell did she just _see_?

Emergency Medicine was often brutal. It was often disgusting and vile and traumatic but Leda had never seen anything as gruesome as _that_. Ever. She wanted to shut her eyes and run away but the shock of such a savage attack kept her rooted to the spot. Maybe the guys in armour weren’t the good guys. She was pretty sure good guys didn’t cleave heads in half. Usually that went against the whole ‘good’ thing. He didn’t have the disfigured green skin of the others but he still looked pretty monstrous to her.

And with that assessment the half-hearted attempts to get the taser grew more desperate. If the armoured guys were monsters too, then there was no good or bad wherever the hell she was. There was just death and she wasn’t going to die there. She wasn’t going to die before she got home and told her dad that he was right.

The fallen body left a small gap in the armoured line and other monsters tried to take advantage and muscle through the minute gap. The first few, however, were cut down by the blonde man and each time a body fell Leda felt the bile rise in her throat until she couldn’t fight it anymore. Leaning to the side she threw up, almost relieved at the short reprieve from watching the blonde man hack away at living things. She heaved until there was nothing left and looked back, wiping a hand over her mouth and wincing at the burn in her throat.  

More monsters fell around him in their threes as he swung his great sword. He even used their bodies as steppingstones, hopping from one bloody back to the next to hack into more of the disfigured things. Streaks of black covered his face and hair until he was dripping in it. His mouth twisted savagely into a grin as he cut another down and for a second, Leda imagine him as Death. Saw the bones shift under his skull and arms and the rot of his flesh as he lauded over his victims. Then she blinked and the vision was gone and it was just him again, hacking away until his pride made him screw up.

A monster slipped past him as he took three on at once and swung a rusty cleaver into the neck of a bronze-armoured archer. They went down and widened the gap of dead even more and despite her whole ‘get the fuck outta dodge they’re all evil’ attitude, she hoped it wasn't the one that had told her Dartha. Despite their dubious intentions, they at least hadn’t tried to shoot her in the face with an arrow. _Yet_. 

The gap was too wide now and between one blink and the next, the monsters were through to Leda’s side of the river. They clambered over their fallen and mashed their bodies in the shallow water of the bank with their heavy feet until everything was a mess of flesh and blood. Dread hardened the liquid in her stomach as they scattered behind the armoured warriors onto the bank and more worryingly, closer to her.    
   
The taser was still stuck and she growled, frustrated and yanked savagely until the pocket ripped and she managed to get it out. Her glee was short lived though, because as soon as she got it free, one of the monsters spied her pathetic, drenched body through the trees and made a beeline for her, obviously thinking her easy pickings. 

It’s only clothing was a dirty loin cloth, leaving its barrel chest out in the open. As it advanced she saw that its skin was littered with scars and it looked like a chunk had been carved out of its face. The skin had grown back as best it could but it was still horrific. How the hell had it survived? If they were using bows and swords to fight and not guns, then they obviously hadn’t discovered sanitized hospitals yet. A wound that big should have killed it. But it had survived, living long enough to now be able to chop her head off.  

She needn’t have worried though because it only got as close as ten steps away.

A flash of silver detached its head from its shoulders with a spray of black blood. Startled, a scream clawed its way from her throat as its head rolled right and its decapitated body lurched forward and left. It slammed into the earth at her feet, shaking the ground and kicking up a plume of dust. As it cleared, there stood her Dartha Guy, chest heaving from the strain of committing a war crime in front of her. Normally she hated women being saved repeatedly in books and films but right then, she couldn’t have been happier to see him again.   

He took a step towards her but another monster rushed him from behind. It swung what looked like a mallet up and knocked his helmet off, releasing a wave of pale wheat coloured hair. His eyes were wide set and upturned and his cheekbones high and sharp. His wide, full mouth was twisted into a snarl and he spat at the monster as it began to circle him.

He was beautiful, for sure, but it was also a weird beauty. His features were lovely but almost too  _much_. Too sharp. Too beautiful. Too spaced apart to be human. The snarl at his lips coupled, with the angle of his eyes seemed to give him an almost animalistic look.   
   
He rushed the monster, slicing up first, cutting the thing from hip to breastbone and then slashed sideways at its thighs before it had time to register the first attack. It fell to its knees and the skin of its chest unknitted before her eyes and gruesomely parted to show grey flesh beneath bubbling dark blood. Her body shook as she tried to ignore the alarm that seeing grey flesh instilled in her.

Humans didn’t _have_ grey flesh. She had been calling the green-skinned fighter’s ‘monsters’ since they shot at her, but she hadn’t meant it as _actual_ monsters. Just- monstrous people. Just like the armoured people who were a thousand-foot-tall were just tall… _people_.

Grey flesh? Black blood? She could barely wrap her head around being in a new world. And even that she wasn’t totally convinced of. Black blood and grey flesh would signal new species and that- that was something she wasn’t entirely sure she could deal with.

This was the stuff of fantasy and Leda hated fantasy. She hated it just as much as she hated how quickly she was believing in this other world bullshit. Because if she could believe all this in the space of twenty minutes, why couldn’t she believe her dad in the space of ten _years_?

Dartha Guy swung his knives at the same time, drawing her out of her thoughts. They swung down and jammed into the monster’s neck, not quite fully cutting it off. She gagged as it dangled at an angle by a few stringy tendons, and wished this battle would be over so she could settle her stomach.

Dartha Guy kicked the monsters’ body away from him with a yell. The corpse slumped into a heap at his feet he didn’t have any time to rest because two more monsters were coming and they were largest she had seen so far.  

They grunted and snarled as they ran and attacked the blonde. Their moves were sloppier than the his but what he had in speed they had in brute force. She watched him fight steadily until he made a wrong step. The largest of the two monsters saw an opening an it lurched forward, slamming into this side and the other used the distraction to stab him in the shoulder. His armour crunched inwards and the sound of metal grinding made Leda wince.

Dartha Guy yelled and dropped one of his knives but still managed to skip to the side, out of the monsters reach. Her stomach dropped as he gripped his last remaining sword tightly.  If he died, she’d have no chance of getting back home because she’d be _dead_.  
   
The taser rattled in her shaking hand and she thanked whatever asshole ‘Higher Power’ there was for this saving grace.

She’d never used one before but impending death had her popping the lid off and pressing the ON button like she had done it a thousand times before. In all the shows, you pressed the button and electricity buzzed to life but as she pressed it a second, fourth and tenth time, nothing happened.  

She groaned. “Shit. _Shit_.” 

The man, tiring quickly, allowed one of the monsters to slip past him as he put his remaining energy into fighting the larger of the two.  

The monster (ogre? Up close it looked like a hellscape version of Shrek on steroids) growled and squawked as it approached slowly and after a moment Leda realised it was  _talking_  to her. By the smile on its cracked lips and the yellowy points of its rotting teeth, she was sure it was actually taunting her. Heart juddering in her chest, she jabbed the taser button repeatedly as it approached but still nothing happened. Each time it didn’t work breathing became more difficult.

She was going to die.

Dartha Guy managed a shallow cut to the other monsters' arm, it roared at the offence and the sound stuttered the breath in her chest. The monster spun and lashed out, kicking the blonde in his chest. The blow sent him reeling but by some miracle he managed to stay on his feet. 

Leda sighed in relief. Thank God. If she managed to-

Her throat closed as a hand wrapped around it, cutting off her air and thoughts. Sneering, cracked lips filled her vision and the monster said something again that sounded like rocks being ground together. It lifted her until her feet dangled uselessly off the ground and she desperately pressed the taser button again and again but it still wouldn’t turn on.

It shook her, scraping her legs and backpack against the brittle tree behind her.

“Le-Let me go-” She squeaked, using her free hand to hit uselessly at its scarred chest.

Spittle flew from the corners of its dry lips and slid down her shocked cheeks as its rock-slide language suddenly morphed into something she could understand. It’s voice was gravelly, and it pronounced it’s vowels strangely but the next words were as clear as if she had said them herself.

 “You stupid little girl. You shouldn’t have come here.”

_Shit_ , she thought, _was that_ English?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations   
> \- Drego: Flee  
> \- Dartha (Noldorin): Stay  
> \- Man cerig? Drego: What are you doing? Flee  
> \- Daro! Odúlen gi nathad!: Stop! I'm here to save you!
> 
> Hello!  
> The quality of writing takes a real dive in this chapter. I’m not good at action. Like, at all lol but I’m using this story as a way to work out the bad kinks in my own writing. Unfortunately, action muddles my mind and makes the writing dense like it is here. Action is supposed to be short and snappy but as you can see, I can’t shake the habit of describing too much. I’ll learn eventually, but until then, sorry for how wordy this is but I'm sick of trying to edit it down lol  
> This was originally one chapter, but it’s too long so I split it again. Just in case you were wondering why it ended so strangely.   
> I know my updates are all over the place but it’s all I can manage right now. University has just started back up and it’s the last year of my MA so I’m trying to be responsible and split my time between fanfiction and original fiction. I can’t promise bi-weekly updates because I don’t want to let you down so I think we’ll just agree that I’ll do my best aha. I’ve set up a twitter account for anyone put out by my chronic slowness. The handle is: aobh_fanfiction   
> Feel free to come talk to me about fandom stuff, when I’ll update next and what kind of food you love because I love talking about food!   
> Hope you’re all having a lovely week! I’ll update again hopefully by Sunday, the next bit is written, just needs to be fine-picked. (I've also got to figure out a way to make these ends notes shorter lol)  
> Novaer,  
> Aobh x


	9. Chapter Nine

Leda barely had any time to work through the shock of hearing English of all things before the monster popped its jaw and growled something in its own language. It tightened its hand around her throat, and she spluttered, kicking feebly at its shins.

Black lips peeled away from broken, rotting teeth as it laughed. The stench of its breath rolled over her and stung her eyes, making them flutter and water. The lack of oxygen was making it feel like her brain was swelling.

Pain bloomed across her jaw and the taser slipped a little in her weakening grip.

The monster was going to crush her throat. She was going to die.

There would be no finding out the truth about her mum. No telling dad that he had been right. No asking out that guy in the coffee shop and trying her hand at making friends. Actual friends.

Sadness welled in her chest as the smirking creature shook her roughly and switched back to English for one last garbled taunt.

"Tell your people to send someone better next time." It growled.

Her eyes bugged and the last of her breath wheezed out, just as the taser flashed white-blue and buzzed to life in her hand.

She didn't know where the strength came from but one second the taser had almost slipped from her slack fingers and the next it was gripped tight and stuck in the monster's neck.

The effect was instant. Its laughter choked off and its brow lowered before its eyes blew wide, bugging from its misshapen head.

It jerked and flung her limp body to the side. Her back hit the tree with a thunk. The fall tangled her legs together as she fell onto her side, winded. She sucked in a large breath, but the dry air tickled her bruised throat and hacking coughs racked her frame as she tried to sit up.

As she blinked away the stun from her fall, the monster collapsed beside her, sprawling out on its back as it began to seize.

Sluggishly, she rolled onto her side and again pressed the taser into its shuddering neck again for good measure. Its seizing became violent. Spit bubbled and frothed at its lips and she only pulled away when its eyelids began to flutter. It kept thrashing until all its limbs seized at once and it was finally still.

As its chest rose and fell unevenly, cool relief began to mix with another feeling in her chest: guilt.

She had never hurt anything before, and she wasn't sure how that was supposed to make her feel.

Sure, it was a disfigured monster that had tried to kill her, but it was still a living thing- technically.

Graduating medical students never really said the full Hippocratic Oath unless they really wanted to. It was stupidly long and all the swearing to Apollo and Ancient Geekism's meant that the text had fallen out of fashion a good while ago. But everyone still took an Oath of some kind. The collective gist of them being: Do No Harm.

Leda had taken an Oath too. And even though the harm in question was non-lethal and absolutely necessary to the preservation of life (mainly hers) it still felt really…wrong.

She felt wrong. Like she'd changed. And she hadn't felt this wrong for a long, long time. It was unsettling, not being sure of herself.

The monster's fingers twitched, drawing her attention away from her crisis. Its black, beady eyes stared unseeingly up at the sky, but its breaths had seemed to even out. Was it recovering already?

Maybe then wasn't the time to start contemplating if her entire adult identity had been built on a she had allowed to become truth. She rubbed her sore throat as she tried to stand, and her backpack pulled heavily at her shoulders. If she could just get a bit away-

She yelped as a sword plunged into the monster's chest, cracking and scraping bone and cutting straight through any of her escape plans.

Dartha Guy was standing over her. He was leaning heavily on the hilt of his sword and roughly twisted the blade with a flick of his wrist. A squirt of warm black blood coated her lower face. It smelled putrid and she spat on the ground reflexively, frightened that some had gotten into her open mouth.

He was covered in a mix of dark fluid and what looked like chunks of flesh. Black goo dripped down the sharp contours of his pale cheeks as he yanked the sword out of the monster's carcass. Bone flicked up with it and Leda swapped her gaze between the cavity in the monster's chest and Dartha Guy's blood splattered face in utter revulsion.

What the fuck.

He frowned at the taser in her hand, sword twitching at his side as Leda tried to force a sentence past her shellshock.

"What- what the-"

He used his sword to point at her hand. "Man agóreg?"

The taser rattled in her grip and confused, she looked down, seeing a slight tremor in her hands. Her hands had always been steady. No matter what had happened they had always been still. So how were they shaking? Why weren't they steady? What was the fu-

The sword raised a little higher, dragging her out of her panic.

"Man agóreg?" He barked, narrowing his almond eyes.

His anger caused some of the fog of panic to clear, but she still couldn't seem to form a complete sentence. "W-what-"

He seemed to really like interrupting her because he jerked his chin up and made a clicking noise at the back of his throat to do it again. "Tolu."

Confused by the new words and half-thinking he would only cut her off again, she kept quiet.

Huffing, he looked about them quickly, scanning for any immediate danger. He muttered something under his breath before repeating the new word again. But slowly. Like she was a child, or worse, stupid.

"Tolu. To-lu."

She shrugged and his sword twitched.

"To-" He stumbled mid-step, ankle bending unnaturally. Instincts blighted the rest of her own panic and Leda was up and on her feet in record time, hands outstretched to catch him if he fell. She had just watched him kill four monsters in a row but as he shook his head as if to clear fog, she felt concern. Which was a relief. If that instinct to help- regardless of circumstance or morality was still intact then maybe she was ok. Maybe harming that monster hadn't changed her irreversibly.

He managed to right himself, but he blinked slowly, eyes wide as though he was confused. He tutted as she tried to advance and looked down to the hole in his armour, just above his left arm.

The metal had caved from the force of the attack, leaving behind a deep hole. He grimaced, and on his beautiful, stained face, it looked almost ghoulish.

She shoved the taser into her ripped pocket just as he stumbled again and leapt forward and under him, wrapping an arm around his lower chest to support him. She tensed her shoulder to brace against his weight, but she found she could manage easily even in her weakened state. He was far lighter than what she expected for someone so tall and broad.

Despite this, he was still awkward to support. More so when he hissed at her contact and tried to push her away.

"St-stop." Leda said, stumbling on her own wobbly knees and stepping on his feet as he tried to untangle himself.

"Leithio nin!" He spat, sword swinging particularly close to Leda's eye. "Leit- Leit-"

He stumbled and rested more of his weight, words breaking apart on his tongue. The deepening forest loomed ahead, and she shoved aside the itching need to abandon him and run back to the lake. He was a murderer, but he had helped her, and she took an Oath. And it meant something.

It took a bit to work out a rhythm to lead him, but eventually they worked out a pattern of Leda taking two steps and him taking one. He muttered and hissed like an animal the whole way and by the time they reached a sunny clearing in the forest, Leda was beginning to regret getting him out of dodge in the first place. She slowed them to a stop and looked about, straining her ears for any sounds of fighting.

The small clearing was ringed by tall, grey trees. The grass looked dry and brittle and she kicked dust up as they stumbled to the middle of the space. In places the ground looked scorched and surrounded by rings of ash and a stale smell hung about the air that tickled her nose unpleasantly.

Distracted by the new setting, she squeaked when Dartha Guy roughly pinched the sensitive skin of her elbow so that he could slip out of her hold.

She scowled at his back as he staggered a few steps to a lone tree stump. He sat with a heavy clutter of his armour and rested his sword on his lap. He hung his head down at an angle and his pale hair fell forward to obscure part of his face.

Leda rubbed the tender skin he had pinched and got the distinct impression that he was watching her from behind his hair.

"You're welcome." She muttered.

Exhausted, she sat in a heap in front of him and tried to forget the way his sword had sliced through bone as easily as if it had been air and the lack of remorse, he seemed to feel about it.

Her clothes were starting to dry in places, and she gagged at her own smell. God. She needed a shower. And therapy.

She lowered her head into her hands and grasped at the ends of her soaked, curling hair. What a fucking mess. Right now, the adrenaline and shock was keeping her from focusing too heavily on the bruise she could feel forming around her neck, but she knew that when she got home, she was going to be in a world of pain.

How was any of this even happening? She had just been assaulted and helped a man she saw kill living breathing things get away to safety.

"Christ." She whispered.

Dartha Guy allowed her exactly five more seconds of wallowing before he clucked his tongue to get her attention. She ignored him for a bit but when his foot nudged her leg she tiredly looked up.

"What?" She asked, drained.

From her lower positioning he looked even bigger than he had before. She hadn't heard his armour clink, but he'd tucked his hair behind his ears, and she blanched when she saw the way they curved up high into delicate points.

So. Monsters with black blood and blonde giants with pointy ears. What else could this nightmare throw at her?

He didn't respond. His face was blank, but she figured that he was probably as confused by her as she was of him.

How long would it be before the battle ended and his people came to get him? She didn't know if Mercury was still in retrograde or how long the Vortice (or whatever sci-fi crap it was) would be open. She wasn't even wearing a watch so she couldn't tell what time it was, and her phone was back on The Island, water damaged and dead. How long had she even been gone? It felt like minutes but maybe it was closer to hours? Christ. Why didn't she read the stupid pack properly?

Sodden, dejected and growing annoyed with herself and the impossible situation she was in, she couldn't help but bark at him even though technically it wasn't his fault.

(The Vortice thing, not the murder thing. That was definitely his fault.)

"What?" She growled, releasing the ends of her dripping hair. At least her hands hand stopped shaking. She didn't want to think about how much it freaked her out to see them tremble for the first time in years.

Dartha Guy's full lips mouthed the word before he repeated it perfectly. "What?"

She sat up straight so quickly that her back popped in protest, remembering the garbled English the monster had taunted her with before she'd fried its brain and maybe broken her Oath.

Sharp desperation bloomed in bet chest. If he could speak English like the monster, then maybe she wasn't as lost as she felt.

"You can speak English?" She asked, words almost slurring together in her haste to get them out.

"What?" He repeated and after a moment her shoulders slumped. The air rushed out of her lungs along with the brief bout of hope she had felt.

"Of course, you can't." She muttered, hands curling into fists. "Because why would you? I just travelled through a portal at the bottom of a lake on an island that technically doesn't exist. Why would any of this be easy?"

She laughed humourlessly and he watched her blankly as she ranted. "This might not even be Earth let alone a country with an indigenous population that speaks the same language as I do and also has pointy ears. Christ. How British of me to assume you would."

Still, he said nothing and for a brief moment she wished Julian was there too, his jibes would at least fill the void of silence and loss she couldn't seem to escape.

Dejected, she eyed the wound at his shoulder. His arm was hanging limply by his side and despite his aloofness, now that she looked closer she saw the awkward way in which he held his body, leaning slightly to his right to alleviate what must have been agony.

Communication was a total bust, but she was still a Doctor. She had trained for this. Well. Maybe not getting sucked through a portal right into the middle of a medieval battle but she was good at Emergency Medicine. Great, at it, actually. She didn't know jack about sword fights, but she could dress a wound in her sleep. She could help. And maybe helping him would distract her from the looming feeling that everything was spinning out of control.

Driven, she tipped her backpack upside down and groaned when everything fell out with a whoosh of dirty water. The shirt she had shed in Bermuda was soaked and muddied and the Aether Group pack was a mush of white paper and bleeding black ink.

Opening her Med pack revealed even worse news and her heart shrivelled with each new disappointment as she went through it.

Most of it was contaminated. She didn't trust most of the sealed needles, worried that water had gotten inside. All of the bandage rolls seemed dry enough though, so she set them aside in a Yes pile and threw the Doxycycline, Metronidazole and Cefalexin pill packets into a No pile.

Dartha Guy quietly watched her work and by the time she was done the No pile was a large soaked mess of everything actually useful for getting lost on an island and spat out by a pissed off Vortice. The Yes pile however, consisted of one dodgy taser, two packs of bandages, one antiseptic wipe, questionable injections of 10mg of morphine and 1mg of Epinephrine, a couple of wet pens, a waterlogged stethoscope, 2 sterile wound dressings and a half empty bottle of plane water. Not exactly what you wanted with you on an unexpected journey, but she'd have to make do.

She picked up the bandages and sighed, wiping the excess water clinging to the packet on her damp thigh. "Let me look at it."

He blinked his large cat-like eyes slowly. "What?"

"Well at least you're using it the right way now." She said with a snort.

She pointed to his shoulder and shook the bandage pack. "I can help. Let me see it."

He shook his head and she rolled her eyes at his refusal. He'd just chopped up countless monsters, but he drew the line at bandages?

"Come on. I can he-"

He held up a hand, cutting her off and his head tilted to the side as if he was listening for something. His right ear twitched and seemed to swivel slightly, coming to lie flat against his hair. Did it move independently or was it reflexive like a cats? Maybe his (and she still couldn't believe she was even contemplating this) 'species' were part-feline? It would it explain the angular features and large, probing eyes. And the ears. It might help explain the ears.

Just as abruptly as his hand rose it flicked inward to his chest and he rapped his knuckles on his chest plate. He settled his heavy gaze back on her and she shivered, almost feeling the weight of it.

"Len suilon. I eneth nîn Gildor Inglorion. Man i eneth lîn?" He said and she blinked, thrown. What was he saying? Was he trying to tell her his name?

"Uh…" She shrugged and he tapped his chest again.

"Gildor Inglorion."

"Gildor Ingolori-an?" She hedged uncertain, forgetting all about his injury for a moment.

He- well, Gildor Inglorion, she guessed, shook his head. "Gildor Ing-Lorion."

He made her repeat it until she had it right and then pointed to her.

"Uh-" She awkwardly tapped her chest. "Leda Acker shit- I mean- I don't- Well- uh it's just easier to say Gauling."

"Leda Acker shit- I mean- I don't- Well- uh it's just easier to say Gauling." He repeated perfectly, startling a loud guffaw out of her chest.

"No." She snorted and Gildor Inglorion frowned as she shook her head and flung about droplets of water that had gathered at the ends. "Leda Gauling."

"Leda Acker Gauling."

"No!" She said quickly but he looked confused and her shoulders slumped in premature defeat. "Fine. Leda Acker Gauling."

He nodded once and said seriously: " Len suilon, Leda Acker Gauling."

She managed a small, nervous smile and tried to match his serious tone. "Uh- yeah. Len suilon, Gildor Inglorion."

Gildor didn't smile back, but his seriousness bled away and a distinct softness played at the corners of his mouth. It was enough of a thaw that she guessed that at least he could smile. Maybe. Maybe his people didn't know how. Maybe they (whatever the hell he was because it was becoming clear that he was entirely human) didn't have smiling in their culture. Maybe she'd just accidentally called his mum a whore by smiling.

She was so out of her depth.

She wasn't a linguist or an archaeologist. She didn't know anything about new cultures or species or worlds. She was a Doctor. The most she could do now was try to patch him up, go home and bring back the people who actually knew a thing or two about this kind of crap.

"Let me at least look at it." She said again and stood up painfully. He was tall enough that even standing, their eyes were almost level. "You don't even know what I'm saying but you saved my life. And despite all the murdering I just watched you commit; I should probably return the favour."

Gildor Inglorion eyes narrowed as she approached and his hand flew to his sword, fingers wrapping around the handle and slightly lifting it off his lap.

She held out her hands, palm up. "Just let me see. I can help." A beat passed before he let go of his sword but kept his hand hovering over it in case.

She bent to look at his wound and wrinkled her nose in disgust. It had begun to weep a dark red liquid and it smelled awful.

"Sorry." She muttered, distracted, already looking for a way to take off the armour without aggravating the injury. He must have guessed what she was thinking though because he reached under the armour with his good hand and flicked something inside.

The armour split at the side and fell away, clattering to the ground loudly.

Beneath it he was wearing the long-sleeve black chainmail she had seen earlier. He groaned when he lifted his arms to slip it off and Leda tried to help where she could. After wrestling with it and enduring him spitting his weird words at her when she accidentally hurt him, they managed to get it off. It was lighter than it looked but still heavy and Leda let it fall from her grasp like liquid onto his discarded breastplate.

The de-robing left him nude from the waist up and although Leda had her Doctor brain on, she also tried to catalogue as many genetic similarities as she could for when she went home. Two nipples? Check. Adam's apple? Check. No hair on his chest or arms but maybe he liked to shave it off?

He took off his thin gloves as she assessed him. Upper arm, elbow, forearm, wrist. Check. Three long, pale fingers, finger nai-

Three fingers?

She checked for any signs of injury around his knuckles, but the skin was smooth on each hand. He hadn't lost two indexes' in a freak accident. He just didn't have them.

She almost laughed from disbelief. But of course. Because why would he have four? That would be asking far too much.

He grunted and flicked her arm to grab back her attention. She scowled and tried to ignore this new revelation because technically it wasn't important right now and she could touch them later to make sure they were real and that she hadn't just lost a lot of oxygen to her brain when she almost got choked out by Shrek on Steroids. She had a job to do. Patch him up and then worry about missing appendages.

Leda gently prodded the skin around the hole but jumped when his three fingered hand wrapped tightly around her wrist. His hand was cool and definitely not anywhere near a perfect thirty-seven Celsius. Was he sick?

He yanked her forward and she stumbled, trying to keep her footing. Grey eyes stared hard into hers and she steeled herself against being in such proximity to a man who hacked into somethings chest like a savage and then swooped in to save her life like a literal white knight all within the same day.

She clenched her jaw and tried to put everything conviction she had into her voice. "I took an Oath. I'm not going to hurt you."

He huffed but inclined his head a fraction. He squeezed her wrist once in warning before slowly letting go, one long finger at a time.

The wound looked gnarly up close. Black lines ringed the broken skin but it wasn't as deep as she had thought before. The armour seemed to have taken most damage but what were the black jagged lines? Infection perhaps? That would be way too quick. Maybe a poison, then?

"Alright," she said, brandishing the bandage roll. Gildor Inglorion's ear twitched and she sighed. "Let's get this over with."

***

Gildor Inglorion was the most annoying patient she had ever had. He hissed and barked rough sounding (what she guessed were) insults at her, he moved all the time and he wouldn't stop touching things. If she hadn't seen him commit about fifty war crimes an hour ago, she might have found him charming if a little maddening.

Once he realised, she wasn't trying to kill him he had pulled a one-eighty. He spent the first part of his treatment amusing himself with her water bottle. She almost punched him when he untwisted the cap and watched with wide eyes as the water dropped to the dry earth, throwing away her only clean water supply.

Next, he ripped off his wound dressing and played with the sticky bits, causing her to use her last one to seal the hole in his stupidly ripped chest. Now he seemed intent on breaking his next thing.

"Stop it." She said for the fiftieth time in ten minutes as she placed the stethoscopes eartips in her ears and adjusted the binaural on her chin. He tried to snatch it out of her grasp, and she flicked his knuckles in warning. "I said- stop."

She breathed on the chest-piece before laying it on his skin, but he still hissed at its coldness.

"Shhhh," she whispered, straining to hear his heartbeat. She frowned when met with a generic sound of blood and fluid moving.

What?

She placed it on her chest and nodded to herself when her (slightly elevated but steady) heartbeat sounded. She turned to put it back on his torso, but he moved her hand to the right side of his chest and down to where his kidney should be.

Instead of the whoosh of bodily fluid, a quick but steady thump began. It was too fast to match a human heart but at least he had a heart. Even if it was in the wrong place. The tempo was more of a ba-da-da, ba-da-da rather than a ba-bum ba-bum.

She didn't have a watch, so she used her free hand to count on her fingers but lost count four times because he kept trying to inspect her fingers by grabbing at them.

"Stop!" She snapped, flicking his weird fingers away again when they reached for hers. "I have to count."

He huffed but paused his inspection to allow her to do her job, but she ended up counting four times before how the hell did, he have a resting heartrate of three-ninety?

She shot him a concerned look as she counted for a third time. He shouldn't be able to sit up let alone have enough energy to inspect her.

He returned her worried look with a blank one of his own and she exhaled heavily. As concerning as it was, maybe she should just chalk it up to it being part of the long list of things wrong with him. Three fingers, no body hair, cat-ears and now a heart rate that should have had him dead before he turned three.

Well. As long as he didn't go into sudden cardiac arrest, she wasn't going to try and fix something that didn't seem to be causing him any discomfort.

Satisfied that he was a living breathing...thing, she took the ear bus out, only for him to immediately snatch the stethoscope out of her hand.

"Hey!" She cried but he ignored her and took a leaf out if her book and flicked her fingers as they tried to grab it back.

He twirled it in his hands before popping the eartips inside his large weird ears and she grimaced. She was going to have to wash those.

He muttered some words at her, too quick and low for her to fully pick up.

"Huh?" She grunted. Job done; her eyes had already begun to look around the clearing. It'd taken about twenty minutes to dress his wound, surely the fighting would be over by now. She worried her lip with her teeth and winced when her tooth sliced into her fleshy bottom lip. She couldn't stay with him forever. She had to get back home.

Professor Morgan had said the Vortice would be open for a few more weeks, but what if she wasn't even on earth anymore? What if Mercury didn't exist where she was?

Her chest fluttered and she rubbed at it with a fist, uncomfortable.

If they didn't have a Mercury, then was the Vortice a one-way ticket? Was she stuck on this backwater fantasy hell dimension until she died, alone and unable to communicate for the same reason she had failed GCSE French: "not having even the slightest grasp on linguistics"?

She began to find it hard to draw in a complete breath and lowered to her knees. Sitting was better, at least. It was stable. Unlike her. Unstable in a weird place without any resources.

Gildor Inglorion said something above her head but she could barely hear him over the sound of her heart in her ears.

What if she couldn't get home? What if this is what had happened to her mum? What if she had popped up in a battle but Gildor wasn't there to help her? And what if she was dead? Like, she'd died at the battle and all of this was some weird dream she was having in the seconds before her brain died? What if-

"Leda Acker Gauling!" Gildor shouted, startling her.

He had slid down from the tree stump and pushed himself into her personal space. He had one arm around her neck, hooking her in and another around her waist to secure her. Their noses were practically touching, and Leda grew immediately uncomfortably with his easy manhandling of her and the intimacy of such a position. She felt exposed.

The grey in his eyes seemed to glow in their intensity and she instinctively tried to pull away, but he held fast. Much to her annoyance, her eyes grew wet and she knew her face was crumbling by the panic creeping into the corners of his mouth.

"I'm ok." She muttered thickly. But she wasn't. She was stuck. And a murderer was trying to comfort her. Everything was all wrong and why hadn't dad just picked up the goddamn phone?

She pushed at his arm until he released her, but he maintained his close position.

With a sniff, she wiggled a damp wrist between their bodies to rub at the corner of her eye. "I'm ok, Gildor Inglorion."

Hesitantly, he laid a large hand over her bony, damp shoulder.

"Leda Acker Gauling." He breathed, sadly.

It was all he could say but he said it so softly, and with such feeling that it only made her more upset and she began to weep in earnest.

He tutted like a mother would and wrapped his long arms around her sticky wet clothes and pulled her to his bare chest and it was so strange that she didn't even tell him to let go.

She couldn't remember the last time someone hugged her. Let alone the last time someone had seen her cry.

He said something in his language and Leda took the time as she sniffled pathetically to note how lovely the words were. It almost sounded like he was singing.

"I'm ok." She hiccupped into his chest.

She tried to pull away when it felt like she wasn't about to collapse into a puddle of sadness, but he held fast and she actually let him. Which was probably, considering the monsters and murder and three fingers and pointy ears, the strangest thing she had experienced that entire day.

Eventually his arms grew slack and he relaxed against her. She tried to pull back, but he kept leaning on her and she huffed a watery laugh.

She pushed his chest gently with her shoulder.

"Gildor Inglorion I said I'm fi-"

He fell away onto his back, eyes half-closed and pale cheeks flushed.

The black lines from his injury were longer, creeping from under the square wound dressing and crawling up and down his chest and arm.

"Shit!"

She scrambled forward and lay her head on his chest, getting the placement of his heart wrong three times before resting her ear in the right (wrong) place.

It beat only faintly but she was so unaccustomed to his physiology that she couldn't be sure if that's how it always was or if earlier was how it always was or- or-

There was no time for ruminations on physiology. Get supplies, help him, go home. That was her plan. That was the only plan.

She braced herself, ready about to jump up and rifle through the Yes pile for something- anything to help but she couldn't because one minute Gildor Inglorion was in front of her and the next he was being dragged away by his shoulders and hidden behind someone in full armour.

On reflex she stood quickly, ignoring the rush of blood to her head and the heavily armoured person in front of her. She twisted on her ankle to run back towards her stuff but smacked face first into someone's plated chest. She squeaked and took a step back, but they grabbed her shoulder and the weight of it kept her melded to the spot.

The world seemed to slow around her and as she followed the hand to the body and up and up to the attached face. She gulped when she realised who it was.

It was the blonde from the river, all six-foot infinity of him.

Up close he was even more terrifying. A proud face, still twisted in rage, was bordered by braided blonde hair that, when it caught the light, shined like liquid gold. His eyes were almond shaped and angled and bordered by high cheek bones and dark blonde eyebrows pulled down into a glare.

If Leda wasn't half convinced that she was about to piss herself, she might have been more appreciative of his savage beauty.

Gone was Gildor's softness.

Here was the monster she had seen cut a head in half with no remorse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations
> 
> Sindarin-
> 
> Leithio nin: Release Me
> 
> Len suilon. I eneth nîn Gildor Inglorion. Man i eneth lîn?: I greet you. My name is Gildor Inglorion. What is your name?
> 
> Man agóreg?: What did you do?
> 
> Quenya-
> 
> Tolu: Stand/Get up
> 
> Hi guys!
> 
> I apologise for how long this took, and I won't make any promises for the next chapter. As usual, this is over-edited but Fateme reminded me on Twitter that I shouldn't try to be a perfectionist and she's right. My fretting about this story is getting to me and it's stopping me from just writing. It shouldn't take me six thousand words to get from the Bruinen to half-way to Rivendell, you know? But I'm trying to get back to scene writing so hopefully the next few chapters will be easier, and I can update faster. Introductions aren't my best, so I hope you like Gildor and I hope Leda's emotions weren't all over the place. I hope you enjoyed the chapter and if anyone has any tips for battling over-editing, please let me know! Also, this was proof-read after a nine hour shift so if you catch any mistakes let me know!
> 
> In other news, I think I'm comfortable sharing with you guys that I got a First in my fiction for this half of my MA! I wrote original fiction for it and the University loved it. I've never been prouder of myself. I still think I'm not the best at writing, but I can't believe my Professors believed in me enough and liked my work enough to give it a First. If I get another First this year, I'll leave with a Distinction! So yeah, that's what kind of distracted me this month as well but mainly, I'm just a dumb-dumb over-editor who is never happy lol
> 
> I hope you're doing better than me, and everyone is looking forward to Christmas. If you don't celebrate Christmas, then I at least hope you spend some lovely time with your nearest and dearest.
> 
> Thank you all again for your continued support and I'll get round to replying to everyone's reviews over the weekend. If you'd like to chat please do shoot me a PM or contact me on twitter at: aobh_fanfiction
> 
> Till next time,
> 
> Novaer  
> Aobh x


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